Never Stop Learning

Big, complex, demanding, and competative

2011-01-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

This was the title of the keynote address at the ALISE 2011 conference by Jorge Reina Schement of Rutgers. He made the point that within the current economic and social culture, academic departments within IHEs must educate both internal and external constituents regarding their value. A means of accomplishing this that he did not mention is scholarly communication.

Tuesday afternoon at TCDL...focus on ETDs

2010-05-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

Tuesday afternoon I attended the ETD Forum which made the entire trip worthwhile. Laura Hammons of the Texas A&M University Graduate School facilitated the afternoon and provided a lot of great information. First, she's been instrumental in creating a group called TxETDA, the Texas ETD Association, which is dedicated to developing a network of support for ETD users in the state of Texas, providing a forum for professional development and sharing of best practices, promoting ETD submission at institutions throughout the state, and guiding future development of the TDL Thesis and Dissertation Management System, Vireo.

One of the things their education committee did was share best practices and share information about training and other resources outside of ETDA on their web page (above) and their blog which is located at http://txedta.wordpress.com/.

Another was to increase the visibility of the association through conference planning and creating links to other etd related groups.

Their listserv is at texas_etd_list@utlists.utexas.edu. They are also creating a list of institutions with links to grad schools and libraries who are doing ETDs. In collaboration with the Ohio ETD Association they're working to create a national ETD Association.

Tuesday morning at TCDL....ennhh

2010-05-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'll admit it. Some of this is way over my head. And some of it is a bit on the dull side. This morning I heard four speakers. The first three were essentially updates on different pieces of the digital library puzzle that relate to the TDL. Chris Jordan spoke about the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) which provides storage and preservation for TDL. Then Michael Phillips spoke about the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) which supports data transfer for TDL. Peter Nurnberg spoke about the TDL Preservation Network (PresNet). Reagan Moore from the UNC Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science was supposed to give the closing keynote address but the technology failed (the laptop/projector combination stopped working) so he led a conversation on data management that was so technical that I was lost.

However, during the break between the first three speakers and the last I had the luck to meet folks from both TAMU-Kingsville and UT Brownsville who are at roughly the same point in TDL/IR installation & set up that we at TAMU-CC are. Both very nice, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about collaborating. UT Brownsville is going to be holding a "TDL Day" for their faculty this fall and has invited me down for the event.

More from TCDL

2010-05-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

This afternoon's sessions brought us up to date with the work that's going on at TDL. It's really pretty amazing.

A couple of faculty from the ISchool here at UT Austin, Unmil Karadkar and Luis Francisco-Revilla, suggest that one solution for meeting TDL's increased needs (financial, temporal, human resources) is to partner with other units on TDL campuses. Not to be confused with the beta versions of institutional IRs hosted by TDL e.g. http://labs.tdl.org/tamucc-ir, TDL Labs is a test bed for that collaboration. Among their ideas are research conducted by students and a collaborative matchmaking database where projects for which specific skills are needed would be matched with scholars at TDL institutions who possess those skills.

Peter Nurnberg, Chief Technology Officer for the Texas Digital Libraries, presented an update of progress on Vireo, TDL's electronic thesis and dissertation management software. Although not all TDL institutions are using Vireo, they have deployed Vireo lab instances for all TDL institutions in order to respond to requests for trials more quickly. Of the TDL institutions that are in production with Vireo, Texas
A&M and Texas Tech maintain their own Vireo servers, the rest are hosted at TDL and thus upgraded all at the same time and in the same way.

They’re going to put Verio into open source production on 1 September 2010. Both MIT and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have signed on as developers/users and they’re in talks with the California Digital Library.

One of the really interesting things about this conference is learning a little more about the software development process and work flows for collaboration and momentum and development methodologies like kanban (used for Vireo) and scrum (used for TDL).

Finally, Mark McFarland, co-director of TDL, gave an update on TDL overall. He recapped some of what was included in the Vireo update and then moved on to several other TDL project. First, TxLOR (Texas Learning Objects Repository) will be “hardened” (that's a development term I learned that means settled on for sure) this summer and deployed this fall. Their other focus for the upcoming summer is the Preservation Network.

Mark also mentioned that TDL has signed a contract Texas Advanced Center for Computing which will provide them with 80 terabytes of storage (that's 1024 gigs per terabyte). They'll distribute this to TDL member institutions at a minimum of 8 TB for each Tier 1 institution, 4 TB for each Tier 2 institution and 2 TB for Tier 3 institutions. These minimum amounts will be included in each institution's membership fees. Additional storage will be available at an additional, but still deeply discounted prices.

They've also done some work on providing usage stats to TDL members. They’ve outsourced the development and plan to begin to integrate it into TDL over the summer. And finally, they’ve “gotten out of the business” of "hand holding" through the Shibboleth install process. Paul Caskey from LEARN is now providing Shibboleth support for TDL members.

TCDL 2010

2010-05-17T08:01:00.001-07:00

So here I am at the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries in Austin, TX. It’s an interesting crowd in attendance. There are about 110 of us (intimate compared to ALA) including lots of computer scientist from the looks of the list of attendees. And lots of suits in the audience this morning. Wonder if they’re really administrative types with computer science “roots”?

Keynote speaker this morning is Leslie Carr, senior lecturer in the Intelligence, Agents, and Multimedia Group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southhamton, on the directions IRs have taken in the UK, Europe, Australia, and the US. He suggests that, in UK there is greater emphasis and requirement for institutions to take responsibility for accounting for the federal, public research funds that they receive. There’s a national research assessment process. He doesn’t see that emphasis being made in the US. The response is/was for repositories to position themselves as providing a catalog of research output. The advantage of this is that it positions the repository at the heart of the institution. The disadvantage is that it diverts the repositories’ attention to their original goal of providing open access to research results.

I guess I disagree, from the perspective of the US, I think the assessment side goes hand in hand with providing open access to research results to the people who really paid for it, the taxpayers.

Interesting closing idea, that librarians are mediating new practices, e.g. the creation of repositories, open access, and science 2.0, at the same time they are enforcing historic norms like copyright, privacy, and intellectual property.

Research tip

2010-03-01T13:59:00.000-08:00

I have found a wonderful new icon in the Adobe Acrobat Reader (at least I think that's where it originates). I've been searching for publications in online databases and when I find an article I usually want to not only add it to my zotero library but I also want to download a copy for reading later. Now adding a citation to my zotero library has always been easy since I use version 2.0 that syncs between my computer at work and my laptop. But in order to have copies of the articles themselves on my laptop in the past I've saved a copy of the pdf to my hard drive at work then opened up an email and attached the article to it so I can open it on my laptop and download it. I know that doesn't sound all that cumbersome but it is. Now, however, with this new little icon in pdf docs I can email a copy of the pdf to myself without having to go to the trouble of downloading it, opening an email message, and attaching the file. I just click the 'email' icon within Acrobat, enter my email address, select the option to attach a copy of the article and hit send. It's almost as good as sliced bread!

Teaching and learning online

2010-01-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

I just had a "water cooler conversation" with a colleague who was expressing her fear and hesitancy about participating in her first experience in an online class. She is a graduate student in a teacher education program and has had all of her classes so far in a face to face setting. The class is beginning their first group project and must conduct the entire experience in WebCT. She was particularly worried that the potential pitfalls of group work would be exacerbated by being conducted in an online setting.

I love teaching and learning online so I shared my experiences in online classrooms as both a student and a teacher with her. Particularly, I suggested that she set aside a small amount of time each day (its a four day project) to dedicate to "talking" to her group. The first day she might even want to take some extra time to get a feel for the online classroom and how it would work; how to post a message to her group mates and how to respond to a message. I explained the ways that asynchronous discussion can be different from synchronous discussion in a physical classroom, especially the way individuals' establish their presence or voice in an online environment. And I shared with her my experience that students (and teachers) online often feel much more comfortable participating in an online environment because the little bit of anonymity that online interactions lend that has a way of encouraging participation from students who are uncomfortable with participation in a face to face discussion. Finally, I said that I hoped she would begin to get a sense of what works and what doesn't work, what she likes and doesn't like, about online learning because that can be invaluable in the process of discovering how to teach effectively online.

It was a great conversation that both of us left feeling good about. She because she began to see the potential for enjoying working, learning, and teaching in online environments and me because I was able to share my good experiences and make her feel more comfortable.

Writing, blogging, and time

2010-01-26T06:14:00.000-08:00

As I work on my dissertation I haven't been able to resist reading a couple of "how-to" books. Several of them insist that one does not necessarily need huge chunks of time in which to write. Instead, most suggest starting to write (or 'pre-write', that is taking notes from reading, creating outlines, etc.) in small chunks of time and then building up to longer periods slowly and as time permits. One reason for this is that rarely do we actually have large chunks of time in which to write (which makes finding them a means of procrastination).

This morning I read a blog from Inside Higher Ed in which the author discussed the relationship between blogging and teaching online and the amount of time he spends writing his blog: roughly 30 minutes per day. As a result of my reading I've been trying to do at least twenty minutes of dissertation writing everyday and, after reading this blog, it occurred to me that I tend to put off blogging because of the time it takes. This reasoning seems as faulty as reasoning that I need big chunks of time to write my dissertation. So although there will be days that I put off blogging for twenty or thirty minutes a day in favor of dissertation writing for twenty or thirty minutes a day (when I only have one twenty or thirty minute chunk of time to spend for instance), I'm going to try to work blogging into my daily writing routine.

These are some of my readings on dissertation writing:

Allen, George Richard. 1973. The Graduate Students' Guide to Theses and Dissertations; a Practical Manual for Writing and Research. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Bolker, Joan. 1998. Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis. New York: H. Holt.

Dunleavy, Patrick. 2003. Authoring a PhD: How to Plan, Draft, Write, and Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation. Palgrave study guides;. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Foss, Sonja K. 2007. Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation / Waters, William Joseph Condon. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Glatthorn, Allan A. 1998. Writing the Winning Dissertation: A Step-by-Step Guide. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press.

Herr, Kathryn. 2005. The action research dissertation : a guide for students and faculty. Thousand Oaks Calif.: Sage.

Martin, Roy. 1980. Writing and Defending a Thesis or Dissertation in Psychology and Education. Springfield, Ill.: Thomas.

Mauch, James E. 1998. Guide to the Successful Thesis and Dissertation a Handbook for Students and Faculty. 4th ed. Vol. 58. Books in Library and Information Science ; V. 58. New York: M. Dekker.

Ogden, Evelyn Ogden. 2007. Complete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less. 3rd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., April 25.

Single, Peg. Demystifying dissertation writing : a streamlined process from choice of topic to final text. Sterling Va.: Stylus Pub.

Single, Peg Boyle. Career Advice: Demystifying the Dissertation - Inside Higher Ed Mobile. http://m.insidehighered.com/advice/dissertation.

ALISE conference reflections

2010-01-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

ALISE this year has really been an exceptional conference for me this year. I was fortunate enough to be asked to volunteer some time at the registration desk during the conference (as the recipient of the 2010 ALISE Doctoral Student to ALISE Grant). This provided me with the opportunity to meet the exceptional ALISE staff, Kathleen Combs and Tomi Gunn. If you attended ALISE and you haven’t thanked these two ladies you should. They worked long hours tirelessly throughout the conference to make it an exceptional experience. It also provided the opportunity to meet new friends (Lauren Mandel, Richard Urban, and the other folks from Florida State) and old (Ana Cleveland). Just like working the reference desk at work, the most frequently asked question at the registration desk was, where’s the bathroom!

ALISE conference - sessions on teaching

2010-01-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

I've attended two excellent sessions at ALISE so far both focused on teaching. The first was a three and a half hour workshop entitled "Launching a Teaching Career" given on Tuesday afternoon by Scott Nicholson of Syracuse University and the second was a ninety minute session this morning entitled "Interviews and Beyond...Negotiating your first Position". This one was sponsored by the ALISE Doctoral Special Interest Group and featured Heather Hill, Leigh Estabrook, and Melanie Kimball as panelists.

The first session focused on teaching and covered learning outcomes, classroom assessment techniques, course design, course design, and course evaluation. Each section of the presentation built on the previous ones and each involved participants responding to a very short assignment, talking with a few other participants about the assignment, and then sharing their discussion with the whole group (a technique Scott called 'think, pair, share' and meant to be a practicing what you preach type of lesson). By the end of the session, participants had a learning outcome, a way to assess students' success on that outcome, a way to integrate it into a course, and a way to evaluate it's effectiveness. It was an exceptional session that could (and actually may be in some places) be expanded to a semester long course for doctoral students.

The second session focused on preparing doctoral students for seeking and achieving success at their first faculty position. Also an immensely useful session. The two most important things I learned in this session were to begin thinking of myself as a scholar/teacher rather than a student and (more pragmatically) some very useful questions to ask at an interview about things that are important to me as well as when to ask them and who to ask them of.

If and when the session handouts, etc. are posted on the web I'll try to share them here.

Ebooks anyone?

2009-12-11T06:08:00.001-08:00

Just read a couple of articles, one in Inside Higher Ed and one in the NYTimes about publishers delaying the release of new books in electronic format for months after they release the hardcover versions. One article suggested that one way publishers would benefit from the earlier release of ebook versions was that ebook readers would publicize the books they read via social networking software (!) So I was just wondering, anyone out there besides me reading ebooks?

Syllabi and teaching

2009-12-10T08:27:00.001-08:00

I read an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed this morning about one professor's disillusionment at the turn that creating course syllabi has taken. He talks about the days when he looked forward to the creativity of producing interesting and thoughtful syllabi that reflected his enthusiasm for a course as well as having the freedom to change the direction of a course or the readings based on his students' interests and needs. But all this seems to have disappeared from his syllabi, partly due to constraints on his time but also due to increasingly strict institutional requirements.

As a soon-to-be teacher, I found the article a little disheartening. One of the side effects of my dissertation (on educating electronic resources librarians) that I was looking forward to was seeing the (anticipated) variety in the way different faculty teach courses as those ways are reflected in their course syllabi. But if professor Brottman's experience is reflective of a general trend away from creativity and towards institutionalized templates for syllabi that must be approved months prior to the beginning of a course, then I confess to being a little disappointed.

Did you know?

2009-11-14T11:47:00.000-08:00

Did you know that MS Word 2007 has a function that automatically creates and updates a table of contents in your document? Peg Boyle Single points out in her new book that this is highly useful for creating and maintaining a one page working outline of a paper as you write. Imagine how useful it would be to have at your fingertips an outline of what you've written so far that automatically updates itself as you write! I confess that I am a visual/kinesthetic learner (I learn by seeing and doing) and maybe that's why I find this tip so useful. It makes clear to me where there are gaps in my writing that need to be filled or sections that would really flow together much better in a different order.

To try out this useful tool:

Use the heading styles in the Styles box under the Home tab to identify sections as you write. Then place your cursor at the point in the document where you want to place the table of contents/outline. Finally, select Table of Contents from the References tab in Word 2007.

Microsoft has a couple of useful recorded tutorials that give some greater detail on the use and customization of tables of contents at http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC102616991033&CTT=6&Origin=RP102617091033.

Dissertating...or planning to dissertate

2009-08-31T18:59:00.001-07:00

So I've read two books full of advice for surviving a dissertation (Mauch, James E. 1998. Guide to the Successful Thesis and Dissertation a Handbook for Students and Faculty. 4th ed. Vol. 58. Books in Library and Information Science. New York: M. Dekker and Ogden, Evelyn Ogden. 2007. Complete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less. 3rd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.). They're quite different and offer different kinds of advice for navigating the process and the institution. I was disappointed to discover that I can't actually complete my dissertation in two semesters because of the deadlines the TWU has in place (e.g. they must have two final copies of your dissertation in their office a month before commencement as opposed to Ogden's book that says that the typical timing for a defense is at least two weeks before commencement)...sigh. But it did force me to create a realistic time line that uses Ogden's time line as a skeleton modified with TWU's deadlines. And that might allow me to finish by August 2009...if I stop blogging and start working that is :-)

Dissertation advice

2009-08-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

Now that the prospect of creating a dissertation is looming I've become inordinately interested in dissertation advice. One of the failings of the doctoral program of which I am a part is a scarcity of information or information sources. Other programs I've encountered offer courses from which one emerges with the first several chapters of one's dissertation complete or at least drafted. They also seem to spend a great deal of time talking about conducting research and what's expected regarding both comprehensive exams and dissertation. Sadly, not so in my program. So, in an effort to inform myself, I came across this new column in Inside Higher Ed this week: Demystifying the Dissertation: Piles, Stacks, Folders. It's a new column that, I think, will be useful.

ALA Annual Conference...Saturday, July 10...Designing Effective Research Surveys

2009-07-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

The next session I attended was called Designing Effective Research Surveys. I was very excited about this session and thus somewhat disappointed with the simplistic coverage…although I also have to confess that I probably should have anticipated this, given that the audience was likely to be (and, in fact, was) made up of practitioners rather than more experienced researchers. However, not all was lost! I think this would be an excellent program for NASIG and one I will probably propose for their next conference. So I made a lot of notes about what worked and what didn't in the presentation. Here are some of my notes on the session:

(The speaker's name was Regina McBride). A successful survey project begins with deciding precisely what it is you want to know, specifics are very important at this point. One means to zero in on this is to talk to a colleague to who you can explain aloud what you want to know and who can help you clarify your ideas. Knowing what you want to know will help you to decide who you want to know "it" from.

She emphasized the large amount of assistance that an institutional research department can be in both collecting and analyzing data. She provided links to a couple of websites that will calculate minimum sample sizes: http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm and http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html. The second one is a little more involved in terms of knowledge of the statistical terms.

Surveys can be approached both qualitatively and quantitatively. McBride defined both approaches and their strengths: qualitative uses open-ended questions to achieve results that describe feelings and experiences but are more difficult to extrapolate to a population whereas quantitative uses closed-ended questions to achieve results that are precisely calculated and able to be extrapolate a broader population

In designing a questionnaire, it's important to first decide how you are going to deliver the questionnaire to the respondents. Keep the questionnaire simple: short, direct questions, clean simple presentation. The Killer B's: be brief, be objective, be simple, be specific. Use objective language (no shoulds, musts, always, nevers, frequentlys, etc.) when writing your questions. It's very important to pre-test your questionnaire to learn how potential respondents will interpret (or misinterpret) the questions, both among persons with no knowledge of the topic and those with some knowledge of it. Pre-tests will make your results carry much more weight (by increasing their validity and reliability).

[I liked the way she gave us some practice with designing good questions…but it didn't work very well. She gave us about 10 minutes to work on our own or in pairs on them and lots of people left. What might work better is to do the exercise as a group…which might also work better for a smaller audience.]

ALA Annual Conference...Saturday, July 10...Leading from the Middle

2009-07-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

So here I am at ALA's Annual Conference. The first session on my agenda was a panel discussion/presentation called Organizational theory and practice: Leading from the middle of the organization. As I listened to the speakers, I realized and really thought about the fact that I am a middle manager. I'd never really given it any serious thought (although clearly on some level I've thought about it since, well, here I am in this session). The speakers balanced each other quite nicely. One was a doctoral student who presented some preliminary research on the experiences of middle managers in libraries, another was a librarian educator (as well as an experienced middle manager) in management, and the last was a new (e.g. less experienced) library manager). Here's what they had to say:

First speaker, John ? (doc student, researcher): Shared leadership = a dynamic relationship between middle management and upper management with the objective of achieving organizational goals.
Surveyed 145 middle managers in a variety of library types in the Pacific West contained 12 statements that respondents rated on a Likert scale. Results: middle managers felt that they shared information with UM but didn't get an equal amount of information in return, communication exchange flows up but not down but MM feel accountable for decisions within their responsibility. Recommends more research be done on MMs. [Interesting presentation software: prezi.com]

Second speaker, Joan Giesecke (upper manager in an academic library): Success as a middle manager is like herding cats – they can be cajoled, coaxed, and persuaded but not forced. MMs need to be able to explain the purpose and goals of the unit, develop a climate of trust, create a climate of optimism, and develop a bias toward action. Understand the work of the unit in order to be able to rearrange complex tasks in response to change and intervene to resolve indterdepartental interpersonal conflict. Think about creating a balance between the needs of the organization with the needs of the individuals within the department. Core skills = technical knowledge, planning and decision making skills, and communication skills. Obtain input and consensus on "value laden" decisions. "It may be impossible to over communicate." Mentioned the importance of not just "delegating problems upwards" without also suggesting solutions. Avoid creating a silo of your unit but rather "manage and integrate horizontally." Things to avoid: "transactional style" = rewards for doing something, "laissez-faire" leadership is not effective, nor is micro-management "balance your technical knowledge with respect for the skills in your unit", "think integration."

Third speaker, Megan Anderson: (new middle manager). Model for MMs. Imagine a line that starts with your role as a novice – a page, you move along the line to a paraprofessional position to a librarian at which point the line splits. One path is toward technical mastery, guru-ism. The other path is toward supervisory positions: MMs. Many of us have one foot on each path, her analogy is plate spinning…MM's job is NOT to keep the plates spinning (cause the people who the plates represent are capable of doing that themselves) but to move the floor beneath them in a way to help them spin their plates. "Focus on helpfulness, differentiated from niceness, likability, friendliness." Helping people do what they need to do to achieve the organizational goals;" helping builds trust, trust allows them to follow you.

It was a fascination session and an area that I'd like to pursue further.

Syncing

2009-05-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

Just spent a couple of hours cleaning up my Zotero library, upgrading to their version 2.0b4 which (fingers crossed) will eliminate some of the problems I've had lately including being unable to sync and to download citations from EbscoHost and Science Direct. It has taken several days to clean up my tags (if they're more than 255 characters long, zotero won't sync and won't provide a scroll bar in the tags window). I had hoped I could simply browse through the tags window but, alas, I finally had to resort to scrolling through all of my entries, one by one, to view and eliminate long tags. While I was doing this, zotero was syncing. I notice that it will stop syncing and display a tag-too-long message (but only in the mouse-over text) when it comes across a too long tag which was helpful. Zotero is still my citation manager of choice but I would caution anyone with a large library compiled in a version of zotero that precedes 1.5 to clean up their tags before upgrading to 2.0b4! Now, to eliminate duplicates....

New words

2009-03-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

I'm burried in writing my quals this semester and so not very communicative but I came across a couple of new words in my reading today so I thought I'd share them:

de no·vo
Pronunciation: \di-ˈnō-(ˌ)vō, dā-, dē-\
Function: adverb or adjective
Etymology: Latin
Date: 1536
: over again : anew a case tried de novo

As in "Over time, say later this century, we should expect many new kinds of electronic forums to support scientific communication. It is not hard to find de novo creations today, such as pure e-journals or shared disciplinary compendia,
such as ISWORLD (see above) and GDB."

elide
Pronunciation: \i-ˈlīd\
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): elid·ed; elid·ing
Etymology: Latin elidere to strike out, from e- + laedere to injure by striking
Date: 1796
1 a: to suppress or alter (as a vowel or syllable) by elision b: to strike out (as a written word)2 a: to leave out of consideration : omit b: curtail , abridge

As in "What we have critiqued in this article is the information processing theorizing about electronic publishing and scholarly communication that dominates both popular and academic discourse about the subject—theorizing that elides and homogenizes field differences."

Definitions courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online and quotations from Kling, R., & McKim, G. (2000). Not Just a Matter of Time: Field Differences and the Shaping of Electronic Media in Supporting Scientific Communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14), 1306-1320.

Word of the day: lacuna

2009-02-09T17:48:00.000-08:00

Came across this word in an article this evening and couldn't resist sharing it.

lacuna
One entry found.

Main Entry:
la·cu·na Listen to the pronunciation of lacuna
Pronunciation:
\lə-ˈkü-nə, -ˈkyü-\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural la·cu·nae Listen to the pronunciation of lacunae \-ˈkyü-(ˌ)nē, -ˈkü-ˌnī\ also la·cu·nas Listen to the pronunciation of lacunas \-ˈkü-nəz, -ˈkyü-\
Etymology:
Latin, pool, pit, gap — more at lagoon
Date:
1652

1: a blank space or a missing part : gap ; also : deficiency 1 2: a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structure
— la·cu·nar Listen to the pronunciation of lacunar \-ˈkü-nər, -ˈkyü-\ also la·cu·nate Listen to the pronunciation of lacunate \lə-ˈkü-nət, -ˈkyü-, -ˌnāt; ˈla-kyə-ˌnāt\ adjective

If you go to MW's site directly and turn your speakers on you can hear it pronounced!

ALISE day 2

2009-01-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

My favorite session from Wednesday was one of a set of three juried papers on social networking in LIS education. Two of the presenters talked about the use of social networking and/or technology in course delivery but the third took another tack. He used network analysis to examine the relationships between students to study the relationships between students in an online LIS class. The data he used were taken from the discussion forums. His specific question was whether name networks or chain networks were more effective for this type of study and he hypothesized that name networks were the better choice because of their use of the message content to look for names of the persons communicating. Name networks still present challenges because students may have the same name, one student can have multiple names. He used both name networks and chain networks to compare the effectiveness and then triangulated using an online survey of the participants. He found statistically significant differences between the two types of networks (using the results of the survey as a baseline, although that data was self-reported): name networks provide roughly 40% more information about social ties in a group as compared to chain networks. Self-reported networks are almost twice as likely to to share the same ties as name networks than chain networks. Name networks method found three important types of social relations: learn – collaborative work – help.

After that session I attended a “birds of a feather” luncheon where I sat at a table of educators whose expertise lay in cataloging including Arlene Taylor! We talked about the relative merits of including specific types of cataloging work (like serials/continuing resources cataloging) in a broad introduction to cataloging versus the inclusion of cataloging in a more narrowly focused course on a specialty like serials/electronic resources librarianship. The consensus was that the former method would reach more students and have a greater effect of introducing students to a variety of specialties that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to be exposed to.

ALISE day 1

2009-01-21T05:08:00.000-08:00

Attended the 'Works in Progress Poster Session' this evening, it was very well attended and there were TONS of posters to look at. Luckily, ALISE has posted the abstracts on their conference web site and anyone can access them.

Because of my involvement two years in redesigning the MJBL website ago and then evaluating the results, I was particularly interested in a poster presented by a group of doctoral students from the University of Missouri (http://www.alise.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=80536#58). It described a research project they did on the usability of academic library web sites using heuristic walkthroughs for data collection with the aim of demonstrating the effectiveness of heuristic walkthrough as a method for evaluating usability and developing a set of evaluation criteria (best practices). In their poster they accomplished the first goal but not the second (remember that these are works in progress) so it will be interesting to read their final results.

I also enjoyed talking to Kyungwon Koh from Florida State about her research on the information seeking behaviors of "digital age" young people. In her poster she presented her methodology which is framed by Eliza Dressang's Radical Change Theory. [As an aside, I noticed in Koh's references list that Dressang has just published a new article on her theory in a journal called Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (vol.8, no.3).] Koh intends to use RCT to construct indicators of the particular aspects of information behaviors. Her poster abstract is at http://www.alise.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=80536#24.

I had thought that Becoming colleagues: The experiences of doctoral research fellows in the practice setting would be interesting to me because of my own interest in the different cultures that academics and scholars have to navigate but their focus in this poster was the elimination of boundaries between LIS scholars and LIS practitioners rather than on the characteristics of the boundaries themselves.

I knew that Chris would be interested in one titled Does Size Matter? An Exploration of Job Advertisements for Academic Library Director, 1974-2004. Chris if you read this, the first thing she asked me when I tolder her about your content analysis of library director job ads was, 'is it published'?]

Two TWU faculty had posters as well, Dr. McElrath on Safety Measures Implemented in Academic Libraries in Response to Recent Campus Violence and Dr. Curry on Information-Seeking Behavior of African-American Women with HIV/AIDS. I had a chance to introduce myself to Dr. McElrath which was pleasant.

Updated professional web site

2009-01-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

I just finished updating my professional web site for the year. I'd like to say that I do it more than once a year (and sometimes I do) but the sad truth is that I often give higher priority to more pressing responsibilities and save up additional news, publications, and updates for the end of the year. You're welcome to have a look; http://staff.tamucc.edu/~ssutton/. If you find any broken links please let me know.

Light bulb moment!

2008-12-30T11:48:00.000-08:00

Light bulb moment = a moment at which an idea or concept all at once becomes clear or at which a new perspective on an existing idea or concept opens.

In the course of my course work I've taken a couple of research methods courses in the counseling and educational psychology curriculum at TAMU-CC. During one such course my classmates were telling me about how they arrived at their dissertation topics: they look at the 'areas for further research' sections of papers and presentations in their field. I thought this was an interesting idea (and felt a little dense for not having recognized the utility of this sections of a paper before) but really hadn't put it into practice until today as I was browsing around in my bibliographies searching for ideas to propose for my qualifying exam (which consists essentially of the literature review and methodology chapters of a dissertation) and/or dissertation.

In re-reading this section of a couple of the most intriguing papers I read last semester I realized something new about writing up research: for those of us who employ this method of idea selection, it is much better to be as specific as possible about the paths that follow-up research should/could take. For instance, it would be much more helpful to a reader if an author said, "Further research reviewing the impact of instant messaging presence indicators in co-located scientists and multimodal communication among remotely located scientists would provide insight into how instant messaging works in informal scholarly scientific communication" than to say something like someone should examine further the impact of instant messaging on scholarly communication.

Yet another way in which a writing should always consider the audience for whom they're writing.

Zotero

2008-10-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

Zotero is an opensource software for citation management. That is, like it's proprietary counterparts, EndNote, ProCite, and RefWorks, Zotero is basically a database in which you can collect citations to articles, books, websites, etc. Once you've developed a collection of citations, you can export them in a bibliography which is automatically formatted in (almost) any citation style you can think of. Also like other citation management software, Zotero has a plug-in for use with MS Word (as well as an opensource word processor called OpenOffice, which I haven't tried yet) that allows you to automatically place citations into a document and develop a bibliography/reference list at the end of the doc).

But Zotero has some really cool features that (in my experience) go beyond it's proprietary counterparts. For instance, you can attach notes to your citations (e.g. notes from reading the article) and you can attach tags to them which allows you to then go back and organize and/or search for all of the citations with a particular tag. You can also create stand-alone notes (e.g. not linked to a citation). You can store a "snapchot" of the item represented by your citation, or store it on your harddrive and link to it from the Zotero record, OR store a full copy in Zotero. And you can link any combination of documents, snapshots, citations, and/or notes. Which gives Zotero some of the function of a qualitative data analysis software.

AND its portable! There's a web-based version in beta test but at the moment I'm using the other method for making Zotero portable: I've got a version of Portable Firefox loaded on a flash drive to which I've downloaded the Zotero plug-in (Zotero is basically a browser plug-in that only works in Firefox). Then I simply copied the citations, notes, etc. that I'd collected in the version of Zotero that's on my laptop hard drive to the flash drive and VOILA! portable citations.

Zotero is a seriously cool product. It's being opensource only adds to the coolness IMHO. It's too bad that the developers are being sued by the EndNote folks! [FMI see http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/09/17/Reuters_Says_George_Mason_University_Is_Handing_Out_Its_Proprietary_Software.htm]

The randomness of literature reviews

2008-10-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

Is doing a literature review as random for you as it seems to be for me? I'm doing an independent study course this fall that will result in a review of the literature related to informal scholarly communications and the changes that computer mediated communication will/may have. I did a round of searches from scratch and reading based on the results and am now chasing citations from that and conducting some more searches. I had hoped that by this time (six or seven weeks into the semester) that I'd feel more as if I was making some progress but I don't. I'm still finding new leads (and fearing that I've missed others) and reading what I can get my hands on. But here's where the randomness comes in: some of it I just plain can't get hold of, even interlibrary loan doesn't work. And so much of it seems to be 'grey literature', conference presentations, and other ephemeral type stuff. AND it's so interdisciplinary! I just found an article in a biology journal! Sigh. Maybe this is what I need to write up in my results?!

Research help

2008-10-02T17:57:00.001-07:00

I need some help with some research I'm doing this semester. I'm trying to think of all of the possible forms of computer mediated communication there are. Computer mediated communication is exactly what it sounds like, any type of communication that can't occur without the use of a computer-based tool. Some that I've thought of are:

IM
email
blog
wiki
text messaging
doc sharing software (e.g. driveway.com)
combinations (e.g. Google Groups)
chat (text, voip, webcam)
e-books/e-journals
web pages
listserves & discussion boards
social networks like Facebook

Can you think of any I've missed? Do you think that social bookmarking software/sites like delicious count as computer mediated communication?

Is this cool or what?

2008-09-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

In re-reading an article for a new project I came across a description of a really cool open source, web 2.0-ish tool that some chemists have developed.

"Using Greasemonkey (4), a Firefox extension that allows anyone to write scripts that can change the way a web page looks, the Blue Obelisk group, a community of chemists who develop open source applications and data-bases in chemistry (5), has created several such scripts to enable chemistry-related features. One of these tools will insert links to blog stories about journal articles into the tables of contents of any ACS, RSC, Wiley, or NPG journal (6). This enhancement to a journal’s table of contents is completely independent of the journal publisher." (Martinsen, D. P. (2007). Scholarly communication 2.0: Evolution or design? ACE Chemical Biology, 2(6), 368-371. doi: 10.1021/cb700111w)

Holes or the Library Wellness Program

2008-09-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

The shelves are finally back in place today and we started to shift them around from alphabetical by title order to call number order. As I was shifting (a fairly mindless pursuit as long and the books you're moving are in order to start with and you pay just a tad of attention to keeping that way) I was reminded of the movie Holes, you know, the one where they spend all day digging holes in the desert and filling them back in? We started the shift by creating "holes" in each range of shelving by consolidating all of the books at one end, Once we're done with that we'll start pulling them off the shelves in call number order starting with the A's (LC classification). BUT in order to make room for the items in call number order, we'll have to keep shifting into the holes we made today.

The next random thought I had was that this was pretty good exercise. We were bending and stretching and lifting and twisting up a storm...what a great workout! Who need's the University's Employee Wellness Program...we've got our own Library Wellness Program. Just put on your jeans and a t-shirt and come find me...I'll put you to work shifting too!

Still moving...

2008-08-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

I went in to the library for a couple of hours this afternoon to see if the carpet layers had finished putting down the carpet in the Periodicals section. They had, well almost, the carpet is down but the borders aren't in yet. And they haven't put my shelves back in place. So I finished up the new shelf list that we'll use to re-shelve everything in call number order. I couldn't find a way to make our ILS, III's Millennium, output a list because we use two different location codes (well, actually three if you count newspapers which aren't interfiled with the rest of the periodicals) and it wasn't creating a trustworthy review file (it left out some titles for no apparent reason). So I did it by hand...dumped the holdings into a spreadsheet and sorted it into call number order mostly by hand by comparing it to a search in the patron view. Not very efficient but thorough so now that I'm done I'm fairly certain I've got all the titles included and in the correct order. The finishing touch was to annotate the list by identifying which titles included volumes that are at the bindery. It took about a week of my time, not something I'd care to repeat. I s'pose I should write an article about it so no one else has to repeat it either.

Moving ranges of books in libraries

2008-08-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder how they move entire ranges of books in a library without having to unload all of the books and take the shelves apart? For instance when a library is redecorated and new carpet is installed? It's pretty cool. They have wheeled lifts that actually raise the shelves, stabilze them and make them mobile! We're installing new carpeting in my library and that's exactly what's happening. Here are some photos to give you a better idea...

The orange carpet is old, the blue is new.

The lift has arms that fit through the shelves about midway from bottom to top.

Of course sometimes things don't go as planned.

Crash course in LC classification

2008-08-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

My staff and I got a crash course in LC classification of serials recently as we began a project to shift our periodicals collections in print and microform into LC call number order (from alphabetical order by title). We all new enough of LC classification to find materials in other parts of the library, of course, but now we're all much more expert in LC classification for serials! Avoiding duplicates and using Cutters to collocate titles that have undergone a title change were the biggest challenge. Now, of course, comes the real work: actually moving all the volumes into the right order. We'll be at it for weeks!

Well prepared to teach?

2008-07-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed this morning called "Confidence Gap for New Profs". It's interesting in a number of ways. First because I've been having similar feelings for the past year or so as I approach the completion of my PhD and contemplate a teaching career. I have lots of library experience but little teaching experience that would translate into the classroom for a semester long course. Because I see this as a something that's missing from my graduate school program, I've been working to correct it at least for myself by taking a couple of extra-curricular courses in teaching (particularly online pedagogy) and planning to apply for teaching assistantships during final year of my degree (while I'm working on my dissertation). I realize that this won't be possible in many gradate programs but I think that the responsibility lies not only with the IHE's who are (supposed to be) preparing the next generation of professors but also with the students.

The article goes on to talk about salaries which were another topic of the survey of new faculty upon which the article is based. What I question here is the connection between feeling "well prepared" for a teaching career in higher education and the level of one's salary. Makes me yearn to see the survey questions and the resulting data for myself.

ALA Annual: LRRT Research Roundtable...part 2

2008-07-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

Lynn Westbrook presented results of some ongoing research into the information needs of victims of domestic violence during this same session on Saturday morning. As usual, her passion for her topic was really overwhelming. I think that is part of what makes her a good qualitative researcher (and reporter of her research). She mentioned that she would put her power point slides from this presentation up on her website but I haven't found them there yet. However, her site does contain a description of her research agenda for this topic as well as some of the products (e.g. reports and articles) that she has published thus far. You can find this at
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~lynnwest/cris/cris2products.html

She brought up a concern that had never occurred to me during her presentation: that victims of domestic violence may put themselves at risk by seeking information about their problems, for instance if their abuser discovered that they were seeking information about how to extract themselves from the violent situation learned (for instance by viewing the history of web sites they visited). And yet Westbrook's research uncovered only a very small number of web sites that warned of this possibility (something on the order of 1 or 2%). That's a particularly important point for librarians who might be assisting a victim to find information.

It would also be interesting to think about how Westbrook's model for this type of information seeking might be applied to similar types of information seekers like victims of other types of crimes or an illness.

ALA Annual: LRRT Research Roundtable

2008-07-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

As usual, LRRT put on an excellent workshop in which three groups presented their research. Lynn Connaway (of OCLC), Marie Radford (of Rutgers), and Timothy Dickey (of OCLC)presented the preliminary results of a large study they are conducting on evaluations of virtual reference. They are focusing on both users and non-users of virtual reference in an academic undergraduate population. Typically (at least in my experience), the non-users exhibit library anxiety and, as a result, were reluctant to approach a librarian through VR services. What I thought was particularly interesting was their use of the term "screenagers" to describe the younger members of the Millennial generation (citing Rushkoff, D. (1996). Playing the future: What we can learn from digital kids. NY: Harper Collins). Also interesting was their finding that screenagers preferred seeking information from a familiar person which suggests to me a preference not only for face to face interaction in order to develop a personal relationship but a preference for interactions with persons with whom they already have an established trusting relationship (e.g. a parent or a friend).

You can find a copy of their proposal for this presentation at http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/synchronicity/resources/lrrt2008-proposal.pdf

[Note: I have yet to find where (if) ALA has posted presenter handouts, etc. from the conference. If anyone out there knows where they are, please drop me a comment!]

Next generation library automation (NASIG 2008)

2008-06-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

Vision Session I: Next generation library automation – Marshall Breeding

Author of Library Technology Guides: http://www.librarytechnology.org

Includes a db of libraries including the technology they’re using as well as a bibliography of his own work and others’ work (writing) about library technology.

1. Tumoil/upheavals
- industry cosolodation: mergers and acquisitions (companies becoming larger and fewer) which he feels has resulted in a narrowing of choices of products for libraries
- abrupt termination of major library library automation products
- increased control by external financial investors (equity coming from venture capitalists)
- dmise of the traditional opac
- frustration with ils products and vendors
- open source alternatives becoming mainstream
trends (data) taken from a survey of libraries (his) with roughly 7k responses

product technology trends
- innovation below library expectations; “we need the tools in order to deliver out content and services in the best possible way…in order to stay relevant to our users”
- conventional ILS is becoming less capable of doing this
- which has resulted in a proliferation of products related to e-content delivery

web 2.0 / collaborative computing
- ad hoc implementation
- demand requires the ability of users to be collaborative
- 2.0 technologies aren’t being integrated, disjointed;
- Proliferation of silos with no integration orinteroperability with larger library web presents

2. OpenSource
- alternative to traditionally liscensed software
- software doesn’t hold data hostage: does the system have an api so that even if the vendor didn’t provide access to a particular bit of info can you write a script to obtain it from the system?
- open content
- open acces patforms for scholarly content
- IRs
- bibliographic services
- oepnurl / erm knowledge bases
This is a good thing in his opinion.

3. Open source software: an emerging trend in global ils arena
“this is a spike…there’s clearly an explosive interest” drivne by disillusionment with current vendors
- beginning to emerge as a practical option
- total cost of ownership still roughly equal to proprietary commercial model
- two years ago it was a risky enterprise requiring courage on the part of a library (e.g. Georgia state library)
- TNSTAFL: open source software is NOT cost free: time, support, upgrades
- Libraries are looking for another alternative to the traditional ils
-
-
He predicts that traditional licensed products will coexist with open source…it makes the industry more healthy (as would a larger number of vendor systems); it’s good to have both because their coestience will drive improvements in both types of products
- Opensource (ils) options
o Koha
o Evergreen
o Opals
o Interesting to me that all three have commercial support, financial I assume.
- Building a case (in the business sense, e.g. justifying a purchase decision to administration) for open sources ils: compare total cost of ownership, evaluate features and functionality, evaluate technology platform and conceptual models, ask are they truly next-generation systems or open sources versions of legacy models?
- “Making a business case for open source ils” Computers in libraries, March 2008, http://www.librarytechnology.org/tlg-dislpaytext.pl?RC=13134
- Observations on opensource ils:
o Lack serials and acquisitions modules
o Initial wave opensource ils commitments happened in public libraries
o Again, are they really a new model of automation or an open source version of what we already have?

3. implications
4. opportunities emerge out of the upheaval
5. rethinking the ils: a non-integrated library automation system is not sustainable;

List of current open source products: http://www.librarytechnology.org/discovery.pl

Comprehensive resource management

His job is to present us with his vision, our job is to ask (and answer) how is this going to affect my life as a member of the serials community? What would the ideal serials module be like? How would you do it again if you had a chance? Provide input based on the answers to these questions to both the ils vendors and the open source developers…it’s incumbent upon us to participate in the development.

How is this related to globalization of information?
- interoperability increasing & needing to increase (TWIF talks about interoperability being a “flattener”)
- delivery options needed to keep up with user demands for information delivery – how do they WANT to find, obtain, and use information? how are libraries interpreting and responding to these demands?

Breeding presented his expert, informed opinion on the future of the library ils/automation. Some of the trends he sees

When did e-books become serials? (NASIG 2008)

2008-06-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

When did (E)books become serials?

Rick Lugg presented an overview of the issue including the differences and similarities between e-books and e-journals the gist of which was that the advent of E-journals has brought libraries and their users more content, increased usage, heavy print cancellations, archiving issues, larger share of the materials budget, need to be more selective as a result of recurring costs, more labor intensive.

Similarities between ebooks and ejournals
- both subscription based products
- online (sometimes predetermined) collections
- online “rental”

Differences between ebooks and ejournals
- more individual titles and decisions
- less granuar content and therefore less a&I infrastructure
- owned?
- Platform or maintenance fees
- Strong tradition of expert selection
- Traditional discovery tool is the opac
- Linking and aggregation is less developed
- Different acquisition models
o Platform fees
o Coordination with print
o Online or download
o Selectors and approval plans
o Acquisition on demand

Kim Armstrong (consortium perspective). Libraries have been discussion the same issues surrounding e-books since 1998 including such questions as
- What are the advantages and disadvanatages of ebooks over paper?
- What are the a/d of the current e-book publishing formats?
- What’s the best ebook and reader and should we invest in readers/
- When should we buy and ebook and when should we lease them
By a show of hands in the audience, libraries are still discussing them. Her point is that not a lot of progress has been achieved.

She talked about a deal between CIC (the consortium at which she is employed) with Ingram/Springer for the purchase of the entire Springer e-book output between 2005 and 2010. It provided them with a platform for hosting other publisher’s ebooks they might purchase during this period. Between January and May 2008 their usage showed a “thirst” among patrons for e-books in that their e-book usage was almost 50% of their e-journal usage during the first five months they were available even without the availability of catalog records. It will important to let go of our old models for dealing with books in order to provide our patrons with the e-books they thirst for.

Bob Nardini (e-book aggregator). “Books are back and we need to figure them out a second time.” Pointed out the need for interoperability between publishers, aggregators, and vendors in order to control e-books. Also pointed out the similarity between articles and books that was recently highlighted by the Harvard A&S faculty’s decision to archive their own works in an open repository where they are associated more with their author and the institution than with a group of other articles under the title, vol and issue of a journal.

Peter McCracken (e-journal management system vendor) focused his discussion on the management of e-books and e-journals. Similarities: delivery mechanism and licensing. Differences: e-books are not continually expanding and don’t compare with e-journals in terms of size. Conventional expectations include a need for more accurate information more quickly, bib records for e-books are far more descriptive than for serials and therefore more important for for e-journals, and greater expectations.

E-book management challenges
- title selection: too many records for libraries to manage by hand
- need a better way of transferring metadata from publisher to library thus all parties involved have to work together (more interoperability)
- proceedings: give libraries the opportunity to treat e-proceedings as either monographs or serials
- edition question: which ISSN or ISBN to use?
- different editions are the same, different formats (translations, film, Kindle, audio book, etc) are different which points out the ISBN question

He’s an engaging speaker because he’s so enthusiastic in a geeky sort of way!

Is what he’s really saying that we need a better system for identifying differences between e-books in an electronic environment? Perhaps a la Mike K’s “information shadows” from this morning?

One of the other things he’s saying is that often the relevance of the need for identifying different editions or formats is in the “eye of the beholder”…sometimes you may want to read Huck Finn and any edition will do but on the other hand sometimes you may want to ‘read’ a French translation via audio. That’s a really interesting point in the face of the arguments we’ve had in my library lately about multiple records for a single work ‘confusing’ the patron who just wants to read Huck Finn. Adolpho T. makes a good point that FRBR resolves this.

Great food for thought here: how could we treat e-books more like e-journals and would doing so be useful for our patrons and if it is more useful for them how will we know?

Ubiquitous computing (NASIG 2008)

2008-06-12T19:43:00.000-07:00

Information Shadows: How ubiquitous computing serializes everyday things. Mike Kuniavsky

A self-described user-experience designer. Author of Observing the User Experience. Now owner of a ubiquitous computing consumer products company.

Ubiquitous computing (UC) encompasses use of computers in everyday life (cell phones, talking refriderators, singing greeting cards, etc.) flattener # 10!! Resulted from commoditization of technology (i.e. the pental chip which cost $1500 in 1979 and 50 cents in 2008 with roughly the same power). His point is that “when something is cheap, you can have more than one of them.”

A “QR code” is an imprint that can be added to almost any physical thing and, when a handheld computer is pointed at it, will direct the computer to a url that contains information about the thing the imprint appears upon. For instance, food products point the user to nutrition information. The nutrition information is what Kuniavsky calls an “information shadow”. A “handle” is the term he uses for the imprint that allows one to make a connection to an object’s information shadow.

ThingM (a company that Kuniavsky is part of) makes it possible to access the information shadow of almost anything.

The distinction between an object, the digital representation of that object, and the object’s information shadow is becoming muddier through ubiquitous computing.

So, how does information shadows make everything a serial? His perspective of a serial is extremely accurate and interesting for someone with no library experience. He showed a drawing of a three dimensional box delineated by a dotted line. What he buys (with a subscription) is the possibility of an object rather than a specific object; it is an agreement between reader and publisher for ownership of the “rough outline” or the right to a class of things that changes with every instantiation. This enables us to take a whole new view of ownership and the potential to fundamentally change what it means to own anything. To take it a step further and give another example, why do I need to own a bicycle and my neighbor need to own a bicycle when we don’t typically use a bicycle at the same time? He broadened this example by describing existing a program in Germany called “Call a Bike” and is enabled by UC: you make a reservation for a bike. The bike has a computer chip and GPS signature which your phone allows you to unlock and use and then return. Your phone tracks and provides data that allow you to be billed for the time you used the bike. Thus everything becomes available by subscription!

This puts libraries and librarians at the forefront of this huge social shift because librarians have developed the means of “wrangling information shadows”. “The world of dotted line objects needs people who can organize information shadows.” That is do with information shadows of all kinds of objects what we already do with information shadows of books, etc.

Institutional Repositories (NASIG 2008)

2008-06-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

The title of the session I attended this morning was "Institutional Repositories: Strategies for the Present and Future" and it included presentations by three people; one publisher and two librarians from academic libraries that have implemented institutional repositories. I was interested in this session for two reasons. First because TAMU-CC has joined the Texas Digital Library and second because I'm taking a course this summer in globalization and I think that institutional repositories are an example of the globalization of information.

Connie Foster, Western Kentucky University

The purpose of IRs is the organization and dissemination of scholarly work (Clifford Lynch); to make publically available the efforts and products of grant funded research; showcase the efforts of faculty (in the case of an IHE). Connie shared the statement of purpose for the IR at Western Kentucky University: “a digital repository, dedicated to scholarly research, creative activity, and other full-text learning resources that merit enduring and archival value and permanent access within a centralized database that supports, reflects, and showcases the intellectual life of the University through easy searching and retrieval, and universal access and indexing.”

She then presented some suggested practicalities and strategies for the implementation of an IR. She included a handout that WKU has created to market their IR: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu.

Jean-Gabriel Bankier, Berkeley Electronic Press

IRs struggle for content because faculty lack the incentive to deposit their creative work in IRs (the value of the content is for the reader rather than the faculty), because they focus more on policy and technology rather than on obtaining content, and because their content scope is too narrow. Successful IRs focus on providing services to scholars that provide them incentive to make deposits (e.g. publishing services, signals of quality, proof that their work will be accessed through the IR), on providing faculty with “one-on-one attention” (evangelism), and on widening the scope of the content in the IR (e.g. books, journals, newsletters, conference, dissertations, theses, undergraduate work, speeches, lectures, presentations, etc….I would add other formats like visual art, audio, and video as well as courses).

He feels that IRs might reform scholarly communication by stimulating innovation in scholarly work by providing an additional outlet for scholarly work, by driving intra and inter institutional / disciplinary collaboration, teaching students about academic research and journal publishing, collecting and disseminating dissertations, supporting the creation of new academic journals, offering a new publishing model.

Glen Wiley, Cornell University

Talked the IRs at Cornell University. His focus was similar to Connie’s and JG’s, it included focusing on providing faculty with incentive to deposit their works (through the name/appearance of the repository and structuring the content for the user), recruiting from a variety of sources for content (including other (less accessible) repositories, conferences, faculty work linked from course management systems, and multimedia possibilities), innovative ideas for selection of materials to include in the archive, assessment by number of hits on and downloads from their web site. He finished up by talking about sustainability (from the practical standpoint of available funding, staff time investment, etc.).

This session (all three presentations) was useful for thinking about my globalization course and for thinking about the TDL implementation. Wiley wrote an article about how they failed at first which you probably ought to look for.

What I’m getting from the presentations in this session is that the general purpose of IRs is not only to collect the results of intellectual activity but to make them easily and freely available to the world…to promote scholarly communication.

IRs as a means for an IHE to influence the system of scholarly communication (Bankier 2007)
- promoter of free dissemination of scholarly work
- platform for OA journals (Foster’s story about being approached by a faculty/student group about starting up a freely available journal that resulted in an OA journal hosted on their university’s IR)
- that would make interoperability really important, not only between the IR and the opac but also between the IR and search engines like Google
- what other ways could an IHE do that? WHY would IHEs want to do that?

The presenters focused on assessment via usage statistics (# of downloads, etc.) and as an indicator of institutional quality. Has anyone tried to measure the influence of IR’s on scholarly communication? Or what affect (if any) IRs have on P&T or scholar recognition? Might those criteria be additional measures of success (which the presenters today are focused on to a certain extent)?

TLA - Friday April 18, 2008

2008-04-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

Today I attended an excellent presentation on Social Networking Among Digital Natives: Library Issues. An accurate, descriptive title for a well organized and thought provoking presentation. Although the presentation was aimed at school and public librarians who have contact with children and teens, these are future academic library users, thus what they know and how they use social networking tools is of tremendous interest to me as an academic librarian.

The issue: "teens are cruising the information highway without brakes while adults are struggling to get out of first gear".

The presenter gave the best definition of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 I've ever heard. Web 1.0 is one directional information transfer from a website (source) to the user while Web 2.0 is bi-directional information transfer, participatory, and mobile.

The broad issue here is how does technology influence behavior?
- supports disinhibition: the perception of invisibility and lack of tangible feedback regarding consequences
- supports exploration of identity (remember, this presentation is focused on digital natives)
- a factor in the development of online social norms
- an avenue for social manipulation
- puts youth at risk; the higher the level of individual risk along a continuum from saavy to naive to vulnerable to high risk youth, the greater the probability that young person's vulnerability to danger

Tactics for increasing online safety that AREN'T working--
- fear based tactics (they're not based on fact and are dismissed by YA's who understand adults' lack of knowledge of technology and their (correct) understanding that most strangers are safe
- reliance on filters is not effective; "homework" question for the audience: which major filtering company has a close relationship with the American Family Association (an ultra conservative group)?
- sole reliance on adults: adults often don't know what to do and teens don't trust adults to know

What works is teaching children and teens to make good decisions on their own by creating simple rules for children that they can carry with them into teen-hood (and I would add young adult-hood).
- effective supervision and monitoring of social networking activities by adults
- CIPA compliance
- appropriate educational use of social networking
- use of technology resources to support safety
- allowing appropriate filter administration by front-line adults

The content was substantial and well supported by authoritative evidence. Nancy Willard, who gave the bulk of the presentation, is executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, is a recognized authority on issues related to the safe and responsible use of the Internet. The website she has created to disseminate her work is at http://csriu.org/. On her site, in early summer she is planning to deliver an expanded version of her presentation in the form of a narrated power point presentation meant for use in educator training.

TLA - Thursday April 17

2008-04-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

This morning I visited the exhibits. They seem smaller and more geared towards school and public libraries each year and this year was no different. It took about an hour and half to walk the entire floor. That's not really surprising and probably is as it should be since so many school and public libraries cannot afford to fund their librarians' travel to national conferences.

Lunch was the Ebsco Academic Librarians luncheon and it was small too, but well worthwhile because we learned more about Ebsco's new search interface that is to be debuted in June. The session I attended this afternoon was an interesting contrast to the Ebsco lunch. It was advertised as a comparison of "big box" databases to "boutique" databases and two perspectives were presented: that of a boutique database vendor (HW Wilson) and a librarian (Gary Ives of Texas A&M University in College Station). Given the obvious bias of the presented from HW Wilson, the program might have been strengthened by the inclusion of the perspective of a "big box" database vendor. This part of the presentation included a number of poorly veiled jabs at the "big box" database vendors (like Ebsco) which were entirely unsupported. Gary Ives' presentation was a welcome relief in that it contained a great deal of quantitative support for clearly presented conclusions. Gary has submitted a paper on the same topic for publication in The Serials Librarian, a copy of which is available in Texas A&M University's institutional repository at http://txspace.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/6339.

TLA - Wednesday, April 16

2008-04-16T20:05:00.001-07:00

My library school class is attending the Texas Library Association Conference "together" as part of our course work so we met last night to talk about what sessions we wanted to attend and about a framework for reflecting on them. The class is research and issues so obviously one of the things we're thinking about is what issues are "hot" and what research is or might be done to illuminate them. One of our (ok, at least my) guiding questions is what should we (librarians) be studying?

So with that in mind I attended a session this morning on Digital Natives and Intellectual Property given by two librarians at Illinois State University. They've done and are doing a huge research project on the issue of illegal downloading of media on college campuses and have created an initiative called the Digital Citizen Project based on some of their preliminary results. I was surprised at the depth of their work and how well it was presented. They provided the audience with their purpose, goals, data collection and analysis methods, and preliminary conclusions clearly and concisely. It was very well done.

What I got out of it personally was, potentially, a new lens for looking at copyright as it applies to e-resources and e-journals. Their discussion of the complexities of implementing legal peer-to-peer network on their campus sounded a lot like the complexities that I face in implementing access to e-journals. It's something that I'd like to investigate further and so I eagerly await the publication of their research results.

We had lunch with a group of Texas A&M System library directors and e-resources librarians and hosted by Ebsco. This (somewhat to my surprise) was viewed with interest by my classmates and professor as an opportunity to discover the "real" issues that are being dealt with in Texas academic libraries (which makes sense, I just had never thought of it that way). As usual the discussion was lively and an excellent opportunity to learn about some of the things that Ebsco can do for us to help us resolve some of our issues. For instance, we talked about how many libraries have implemented a turn-key (proprietary) electronic resources management system but how very few of them are actually using them efficiently or effectively. There's an issue for you: we need a way of keeping track of and providing information about our electronic resources (for instance whether a license allows us to the materials in a resource to fill interlibrary loan requests or in e-reserves for our students). The only ones I know that are really being used to their fullest potential are the ones that have been developed in house by the big research libraries. There are open source solutions of course but even those are not cost-free (another issue!).

Published!! ...in a scholarly journal

2008-03-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo! I just received my very own author's copy of vol. 23, issue no. 2 (2007) of the Journal to Teaching Writing which contains an essay that a colleague of mine and I wrote. The title of the article is Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and the Millennials and it starts on page 55.

See a librarian for a good time

2008-02-29T14:25:00.001-08:00

An article about me!

2008-02-21T16:58:00.001-08:00

The profiles editor of the NASIG Newsletter asked me if she could do a profile of me this spring and I've been corresponding with her recently in support of her article. The article came out today and I thought you all would enjoy reading it. Find it at http://nasignews.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/231-200803-profiles-sarah-sutton/.

In the same issue is a profile of the NASIG committee that I chaired last year and have been a member of since 2004, the Awards & Recognition Committee. Find it at http://nasignews.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/231-200803-profiles-awards-recognition/.

P.S. NASIG stands for North American Serials Interest Group. They are a professional organization made up of librarians, publishers, vendors, and others with an interest or stake in the serials information chain.

New Professional web site

2008-02-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

I'm very excited to announce that I've created a new professional web site. You can see it at http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~ssutton/index.html. Have a look and tell me what you think!

Communication

2008-02-01T17:58:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that I added a Meebo IM tool to NSL recently. I'd been talking to a faculty friend of mine about the expectations of students, specifically that they expect their instructors to be available to them 24/7. My friend was bemoaning the lack of "downtime" this creates. Which got me to thinking about the potential for holding "office hours" via IM. Many libraries do reference via IM (there's been a discussion recently on the LIBREF listserv about the advantages and disadvanteges of Meebo) but I haven't heard or read much about using IM for office hours. Has anyone out there? I like Meebo because it doesn't require me to download any software and because it "talks" to a variety of IM services like AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ, and Google. Anyhow, I thought I'd give it a try.

Research agendas in library science

2008-01-27T11:31:00.000-08:00

One of my class assignments this semester is to conduct a small research project in an area of interest to me within LS that informs an issue. Having just finished writing an article for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science on serials collection and management, I've been thinking about the importance of serials to librarians, particularly academic librarians, and how little I learned about them in my master's in librarianship program. My experience in NASIG leads me to believe that this is the case in general and I wonder why. So the issue I've tentatively settled on for the assignment is whether or not MLS programs should put more curricular emphasis on serials.

After discovering more about research agendas last week, I started to look for research agendas in LS, especially among professional organizations and grant funding agencies with a focus on serials. I looked at NASIG, ALCTS-CRS, UKSG, ALISE, OCLC, and IMLS. What I discovered is that most of them lack explicit research agendas but have missions, goals, areas of study, and/or themes in which a research agenda is implied. Some are more research oriented and some are more praxis oriented. For instance, it's evident from their web pages and their conference programs that both NASIG and UKSG are much more focused on the practitioners' side of librarianship.

ALISE and ALCTS-CRS also have implicit research agendas (as far as I tell, there is one place on ALISE's web site that mentions a research agenda but I couldn't find the agenda itself). Both organizations are clearly interested in and supportive of LIS research although the types of research differ between them. ALCTS-CRS's agenda is evident in it's committees and their charges. Their themes include education, research and publication, serials standards. ALISE's agenda is more related to education (for obvious reasons) and includes scholarship and research as well as pedagogy and curricula. Of these four organizations, ALISE is the only one that makes grants to fund research.

Both ALISE and OCLC give research grants (in fact, they give one together the results of which are presented at ALISE's annual conference) as does IMLS. In fact, based on my experience at ALISE's annual conference a couple of weeks ago, IMLS is one of the biggest grant funding agencies for librarianship. So it is interesting that they also do not have an explicit research agenda but instead have "goals":

To promote improvements in library services in all types of libraries in order to better serve the people of the United States.
To facilitate access to resources and in all types of libraries for the purpose of cultivating an educated and informed citizenry; and
To encourage resource sharing among all types of libraries for the purpose of achieving economical and efficient delivery of library services to the public. (still from the "about" page linked above).

So, there's a summary of my work and thinking so far. Next I'll tackle developing my own research agenda, at least a first draft of one. With so few really relevant examples I feel as if I'm flying by the seat of my pants. Perhaps I will take a little bit of time to look for scholars in LIS to see if any of them have their own research agendas published somewhere public.

Thinking about research agendas

2008-01-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

The syllabus for my Research & Issues course this semester says that for
"Saturday, Feb. 2. Each seminar participant should be prepared to report briefly on the research agenda of the professional associations and major grant agencies related to her area of interest. Each participant will bring multiple copies of a one-page statement of her own research agenda."

questions
1. what IS a research agenda?
2. can a professional association HAVE a research agenda?
3. the syllabus says of the course "format (oncampus, distance, conference)
Hybrid in Concept (individualized research but in a common frame and communicated to all
specialists under the umbrella of LS)" does that mean that we will all frame our research using Friedson's model?

The first thing we did in class was to differentiate between a problem and an issue (the focus of this class) so I'm thinking that the place to start is by providing support for my claim that my issue is an issue using the definition we've adopted. In class, we talked about:
How does one know when there are issues? When people disagree about what should be done.
What are some signs of disagreement? Conflict, obviously; Policy Statements, by implication.
What are the sources of the issues relating to the doctoral program?
So, what kinds of research inform a resolution of the issue?
Once the research is done, how will the issue be resolved?
Once the issue is resolved, how will the resolution be implemented? New problems, new issues.

The issue I'm interested in addressing [researching?, resolving?] has to do with teaching more about serials and electronic resources in library school.

Sample research agendas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Institute_for_Development_Studies#Research_Agenda (this one is a paragraph or two)
http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/orkney_research_agenda_-_prelims.pdf (this one is 19 pages long, both include "themes", the longer one also contains sections that give the background and context, assessments of resources, techniques, and strategies)
http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/publications/reports/SRA_final.pdf (this one is 60 pages long!!! and is structured similarly to the first two)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hedstrom (here's one about a woman in LS who has created a research agenda for digital preservation)
Another one I found broke the research project down into phases.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Institutes_of_Health_Research, "CIHR consists of 13 "virtual" institutes, each headed by a Scientific Director and assisted by an Institute Advisory Board. They work together to shape a national health research agenda for Canada. The institutes bring together researchers, health professionals and policy-makers from voluntary health organizations, provincial government agencies, international research organizations and industry and patient groups from across the country with a shared interest in improving the health of Canadians." (makes it sound like a system for prioritizing a group of research projects)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/25710p8p87273216/ "The Special Libraries Association (SLA), an international professional association that represents 14,000 information resource experts, is a key influence in defining and meeting the research priorities of the special library community. In June 1986, SLA's Board of Directors formed the Special Committee on Research with the charge of determining if a research program was a necessity for SLA, and, if so, to establish a'comprehensive research strategy, in particular focusing on issues especially relevant to special librarianship and information management. In June 1988, The Board of Directors voted to establish an in-house research department and a standing Research Committee, which formulated a research agenda subsequently approved by the Board in June 1989. SLA's research agenda sets forth priorities and serves as the keystone to all research conducted by and for the Association. In June 1990, the SLA Board of Directors reaffirmed the Association's commitment to research by approving the Strategic Planning Committee's recommendation that research be one of the top priorities for the next five years. This article reviews SLA's research agenda, current research activities and future priorities, and comments on the importance of research to the special library community."
http://www.springerlink.com/content/d648126577w65123/ Abstract The author proposes a research agenda for libraries focusing on ten problem areas: rising costs, shrinking funding, electronic provision of services, deterioration of materials, use of document delivery services, changes in copyright and licensing, out-sourcing, staff training, organizational challenges, and redefining the library’s role.
ACRL Research Agenda for Library Instruction and Information Literacy: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrlbucket/is/iscommittees/webpages/research/researchagendalibrary.cfm
SLA's research agenda: http://www.springerlink.com/content/25710p8p87273216/

So I've got a better idea of what a research agenda is and I can see that it IS possible for a professional association to have or support a particluar research agenda. It seems to me that the pertinent associations for my issue are:
1. NASIG
2. ALISE
3. ALCTS
4. ?
...and, of course, the next question is which "major grant agencies" might be supportive of research on this issue?

NASIG Board Member at Large - not this year

2008-01-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

It was with some trepidation last fall that I accepted a nomination to run for member-at-large to the NASIG Executive Board again this year. I was nominated, ran, and lost the election last year. I lost to a couple of friends who I knew would do a good job so I was only a little disappointed. This year I was nominated again and was feeling a little more confident about it. But Thursday I received an email to tell me that of the 65 (!) nominations for member-at-large I had not been selected to run. And once again, I find myself a little disappointed but also a little relieved. It took a few days to shake the feeling that I now had a gap in my time for the next two years that needed to be filled immediately and embrace the feeling of relief; now I can concentrate on finishing my doctoral class work and have time at work to accomplish some of the goals my department set at the beginning of the fiscal year. And besides, if by chance the University (TAMUCC) accepts my proposal to adopt information literacy as our quality enhancement plan (QEP), I"m sure I'll be kept plenty busy!

ALISE side effects

2008-01-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

I returned home last night and arrived at work this morning in time to attend the beginning of semester faculty meeting (which librarians are 'strongly encouraged' to attend, even though we are not technically faculty) and an interesting thing happened: I felt like one of them! I always have to some extent (although there are always going to be some snobs) but this I really have to credit to spending four days at the ALISE conference visiting and getting to know library school faculty and other doctoral students. I was made to feel (at ALISE) very welcome and was treated like a peer (which I had hoped for based on my other small conference experiences but didn't quite dare expect based on some of my experiences with faculty at TAMUCC). I think that institutional and intradiscipline culture sometimes creates local norms for faculty - doctoral student interactions AND faculty - librarian interactions. There's something interesting to study!

PAR, Future LIS Faculty, and, of course, Information Seeking

2008-01-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

More good sessions today at the ALISE conference. This morning's guest speaker was Jean Schensul from The Institute for Community Research. She described some of the methods she and the staff at ICR use to conduct what she calls community based research but which is essentially participatory action research. Not surprising that she was the second key note speaker since the theme of the conference is fairly PAR oriented and no disrespect but PAR or CBR just isn't my thing. It's interesting from a methodological standpoint but just not really up my alley. 'Nuf said.

By far the best session I attended today was about recruiting and training the next generation of library and information school faculty (there's an emphasis here that there is a difference between the two). The first part of the presentation was a report on a program called Project Athena which is an IMLS funded project designed to identify, recruit, and prepare LIS faculty. The second part was a report on a program with a similar vision but no grant funding.

Project Athena is well staffed and funded and focuses on preparing teaching faculty by partnering with LIS programs at other institutions and giving their fellows the opportunity to teach. Results of research conducted on the program include recommendations that existing networks and campus resources as well as cross institutional collaboration be used to increase the pool of potential LIS faculty, that new networks and role models/mentors be used to increase the diversity of the pool, and that doctoral students whose intention it is to teach be better prepared to navigate the organizational culture of various institutions, balance teaching and service commitments, and disseminate their research post-dissertation.

Elizabeth Figa at the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science has implemented a mentoring program for doctoral students in their interdisciplinary doctoral program that is unfunded (at least formally, she solicits funding as needed for particular students from her dean and provides some of it herself) and seems a bit less structured and more information than Project Athena but certainly no less ambitious.

I find it interesting that none of the four "example" graduate students from these programs who spoke about their experiences in the programs had backgrounds in academic librarianship so I asked about it during the q&a session at the end of the program. The UNT SLIS program was (and remains as far as I can tell) focused purposefully on students with backgrounds in public libraries and as school library media specialists as does Project Athena since neither school's masters level programs are focused on academic librarianship (and so, presumably, they are directing their recruiting efforts predominantly at students graduating from their programs).

Personally, I think that it may also have to do with the fact that many academic librarians have experience with promotion and tenure and the academic culture having already had to learn to navigate it as librarians.

I did find very interesting comments by both speakers about the "graying of the profession" leading not only to the need to recruit librarians but also to recruit library school faculty. One of them went so far as to point out that there are currently more faculty positions than PhDs to fill them.

ALISE conference 2008

2008-01-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

This is a nice conference. I met lots of graduate students at the "works in progress" poster session last night.

And this morning I heard Yvonna Lincoln speak! I heard afterward that some were disappointed with her keynote address because they were looking forward to hearing her speak about research methods when what she really spoke about was "serving democratic needs for information & literacy". She talked about how libraries, specifically academic libraries could help to reduce the digital divide (a term she prefers to "haves and have nots") using their physical, digital, human and social resources. It was all based on a quote from Benjamin Franklin to the affect that the benefit of democracy is that power lies with the people and if the people lack the "enlightenment" to use their power responsibly the thing to do is educate them, not to take the power away from them.

I confess that I would have liked to hear her speak about research methods too but I got some really great ideas from her address for the TAMUCC Information LIteracy QEP proposal that I just wrote so I wasn't disappointed. The first idea is to involve students in service learning projects (possibly as a component of a class) that would take them out into the community to teach what they learn (information literacy). And the second was having librarians hold "office hours" in the academic departments to which they are liaisons.

She talked a little bit about assessment and outcomes, saying basically that the idea was to go out and ask people 'how has your life changed as a result of X' which seems really simple but is something that I'm not sure is heavily emphasized in the ARL information literacy standards.

I had lunch today with the Research Methods SIG which ended up being about seven people talking about teaching research methods courses in LS programs at the masters level. Very interesting. And this afternoon I've been listening to various people (doctoral students and faculty) talking about their research. In that respect, at least, it's been lots of fun.

Over all, everyone has been welcoming and pleasant. I was a little worried that it wouldn't compare well to the other small conference I always go to in the summer where everyone is particularly warm and welcoming. But I'm happy to say that everyone here has been nothing but warm and welcoming. I have ribbons on my name tag that identify me as both a student and a first time conference attendee and lots of people have stopped me to introduce themselves and to ask me about myself so I feel right at home.

I also feel right at home because all of these people are interested in the same types of things that I'm interested in: research in library science. I've already attended several workshops, meetings for people with like interests, and poster sessions. I've heard about historical research methods in library science (interestingly, women were the first librarians to conduct surveys of library users, not men even though men originally dominated the profession).

I also attended a session given by Bill Moen and Sherry Vellucci describing MERIC which stands for Metadata Education & Research Information Commons. Its a repository for and community for sharing ideas about course related materials (lecture notes, powerpoint slides, tests and quizes, etc.) for teaching cataloging and metadata courses. This is a very cool idea. What you'll find at their website is a prototype.

This afternoon I attended what amounted to a research showcase. Three presenters gave an overview of research in progress. Kate McDowel presented on "The Unspoken Influence of Women and Children's Services in Professional Librarianship 1882-1906" and for historical research it was very interesting. She credits women librarians with introducing survey research into library and information science as a way for female librarians to support and express their own opinions in a male dominated (at the time) profession.

Suellen Adams presented research that she and Mary Lynn Rice-Lively are conducting into the relationship between personality and LIS researchers' choice of methodology. In interviews, they've discovered that research questions tend to be socially or politically relevant, that researchers like to merge their various interests into one topic, and that, when asked to describe their research, subjects were far more focused on their research topics than on their research methods. The next step in this project is to look for correlations between research methods and the researchers' personality (via the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator protocol).

Finally, Heather Hill presented her investigation into the collection of a privately managed public library system. Also not even remotely something that I'd normally find an interest in but, again, presented so well that I found it fascinating (in that perfect world where I don't need to sleep this would be something I'd choose to read about).

If anything in this (far too long) post has captured your interest, you can find abstracts and contact information for the researchers at the ALISE web site at http://www.alise.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=58439.

Online courses for everyone!

2007-12-12T06:07:00.001-08:00

This is so cool I thought it had to be shared on both my blogs. I've long been a fan of open online course ware and have always wanted time to try taking a whole course. I read an article at Inside HIgher Ed this morning about Yale's open course ware offerings. They include videos of lectures in addition to syllabi, tests, notes, and PowerPoints. The courses at Yale's site include introductory courses in physics, psychology, and poetry. I've been collecting links to open course ware sites including MIT's and Rice University's in my del.icio.us site if you want to have a look at some of the other offerings.

New words

2007-11-25T14:08:00.001-08:00

I was reading an article this afternoon and came across several words with which I was unfamiliar so (of course) I looked them up. They're pretty fun words so I thought I'd share them. I must admit I'm not sure when one would ever use them, the author whose article I was reading could easily have used more familiar words and I confess that I mentally accused him of using $10 words just to make himself sound more intelligent (or something). Here they are (with help from Webster's):

perspicuous

Main Entry:
per·spic·u·ous Listen to the pronunciation of perspicuous
Pronunciation:
\pər-ˈspi-kyə-wəs\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Latin perspicuus transparent, perspicuous, from perspicere
Date:
1586

: plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation

opprobrium

Main Entry:: op·pro·bri·um
Pronunciation:: \-brē-əm\
Function:: noun
Etymology:: Latin, from opprobrare to reproach, from ob in the way of + probrum reproach; akin to Latin pro forward and to Latin ferre to carry, bring — more at ob-, for, bear
Date:: 1656

1: something that brings disgrace2 a: public disgrace or ill fame that follows from conduct considered grossly wrong or vicious b: contempt, reproach

defeasance

Main Entry:: de·fea·sance
Pronunciation:: \di-ˈfē-zən(t)s\
Function:: noun
Etymology:: Middle English defesance, from Anglo-French, from defesaunt, present participle of defaire
Date:: 15th century

1 a (1): the termination of a property interest in accordance with stipulated conditions (as in a deed) (2): an instrument stating such conditions of limitation b: a rendering null or void2: defeat, overthrow

NVivo7 Test Drive Report #5

2007-11-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

This is a short one. It just occurred to me that one of the big assumptions that NVivo makes is that all of your documents will be digital. But that might not be the case especially with historical research (diaries, photos, etc.). I wonder how they account for non-digital data? Must explore.

NVivo7 Test Drive Report #4

2007-11-23T14:40:00.000-08:00

Preliminary conclusions.

I've been writing these first entries as an class assignment and while I have 26 more days in my trial of the software and plan to continue using it to analyze my usability data and report my experiences here (after I finish my other class assignments), I did have to complete and turn in the assignment I was originally writing for. This is the conclusion that I wrote for that assignment.

Several very useful points became clear as I worked with the NVivo7 trial. I began to find a number of things in my data that I did not expect to find, for instance, there are a number of behaviors evident among our users that, now that I am aware of them, will affect the way I teach library instruction. That is useful in itself but in terms of conducting qualitative research, I also see that there is a fine line that every researcher has to draw for him or herself between relevant findings and irrelevant findings. Where to draw that line would depend on the research question, the type of research design, the theoretical framework of the project and the theoretical orientation of the researcher.

My frame of mind is important to the quality of the results. It does not do much good to rush through data anlaysis. When I’m in a hurry (e.g. under a deadline to finish an analysis), I am at my least analytical and am least liable to go test an idea and am most liable to miss something in the data. Also, I tend toward linearity by nature. In this analysis of my usability data (which I started at the beginning of this semester and after all of my data collection was complete), I wanted to conduct the analysis participant by participant and then task by task rather than having to go back to participants whose transcripts I had already coded to look at them again. Both of these habits are things that I understand I will need to guard against as I continue to conduct qualitative research.

As far as the product, NVivo7 goes, it seems to me to be the most flexible and therefore useful of the QDA programs I have tested this semester. My “likes” lists outweighed my “dislikes” lists and it seems to combine most of the features that I found useful in all of the QDA programs I have tested. It seems to be intuitive enough for a novice researcher to grasp and begin using without to steep a learning curve but it also has some more advanced linking, memoing, querying, and modeling features that will satisfy a more sophisticated researcher.

The biggest drawback is the inability to code data in any format other than text (although I understand that this has been addressed in the next version). Another is that NVivo7, like most of the other QDA programs I have worked with this semester, seems oriented toward grounded theory research. I can think of two reasons why this might be so; first, because grounded theory is more systematic (at least Strauss & Corbin’s version of it) that other qualitative approaches and it is easier to develop computer programs that support this kind of thinking. But second, it may be the context of my perception that makes it seem so, given my inexperience with qualitative research the more systematic approaches like grounded theory would be easier for me to grasp and to find evidence of and uses for in the software.

NVivo7 Test Drive Report #3

2007-11-23T14:38:00.000-08:00

Coding.

One thing that is different about how I’m coding my usability transcripts is that when I was watching the video recording as I was listening to and reading the transcript, I tended to group segments by task. I was thinking that, after I had coded them all, I would go back and compare each task. That doesn’t seem to be uppermost in my mind as I analyze and code in NVivo7 even though I’m using codes I created while I watching the video recording as I was listening to and reading the transcript.

I downloaded a trial copy of Camtasia with which I created an “external” for and played back as I analyzed the second transcript/video with NVivo. That helped a lot to continue my analysis of how our participants moved around the screen and from page to page. However the whole thing would be more useful for analyzing this kind of data if the video were built in to NVivo itself. I’ll be interested to see how that works in NVivo8.

Queries.

The Getting Started Guide wasn’t much help to me for learning about constructing and conducting queries so I watched the online tutorial. It gave me a lot of ideas about queries I could make of my data, as little as there is. I tried queries by node and word frequency and matrix queries. Matrix queries were my favorites because I could really begin to see how patterns might be emerging from my data (I was looking for correspondence between those participants who tended to browse the links clicking on those with which they were unfamiliar or not recognizing a term or label and those participants who opened up a particular page that we have labeled “Remote Access” because a high correspondence might indicate that we need to re-name that page with a more meaningful term).

Likes:
- being able to create a query and then re-run it as you continue to add data
- being able to save the whole project and move with it from one computer to another

NVivo7 Test Drive Report #2

2007-11-20T14:50:00.001-08:00

November 20, 2007 – Creating my ‘project’

I followed the step-by-step instructions in the Getting Started guide for setting up a new project. As I worked through the steps, I noted some things I liked and disliked about NVivo7:

Likes:
- You can use regular Word files (.doc) or even text files (.txt) instead of having to convert everything to Rich Text files (.rtf), although .rtf files are acceptable. This is not really a very big deal I suppose but always felt cumbersome to me when working with other QDA software (e.g. MaxQDA and Transana).
- The ability to import multiple documents at once rather than having to select and import them one at a time.

Dislikes:
- You can’t use punctuation in naming nodes, e.g. I wanted to name a node “everything ought to be together” including the quotation marks because I was quoting a participant.
- (this one started out as a like) There doesn’t appear to be a limit to the length of description that one can give to nodes like there is in Transana…whoops! I was wrong
- No spell check
- While coding I can only look at a list of EITHER my free nodes or my tree nodes but not both at once, that’s awkward
- The little window that opens up every 15 minutes to remind you to save your work in annoying, wonder if there’s a way to change that setting to auto-save without asking me…there is! I found it by using Help but it was exactly where I would have expected it to be had I been thinking more clearly about the similarities between NVivo7 and Outlook.

I used the online help screens to find out how to add attributes to cases after reading that this was possible in the Quick Start Guide. I decided to identify each of my participants as a case since we had collected data describing characteristics like age, gender, perceived computer skills, internet use, library web site use, academic status, major, etc. I created attributes for each piece of data we collected.

Next, I added some tree nodes and free nodes based on codes I had already created and been using with this data in another piece of QDA software. One of the things I’m hoping to find out is whether one can create a tree node at a higher level of a hierarchy and then assign existing, hierarchically lower nodes to the new hierarchically higher level node.

I read through one entire transcript and coded it. During the process I created some new codes. These transcripts accompany a video recording of the screen of the workstation on which the participant is completing tasks. This is the first time I’ve analyzed a transcript without simultaneously watching the video recording of the sequence of pages visited. It’s a different experience focusing completely on the text. I can’t tell yet whether I’ll get more or less or just different results doing it this way.

NVivo7 Test Drive Report #1

2007-11-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

It HAS been a while since I posted anything here. Between hiring a new employee at work and catching some kind of flu bug in October that I've just now gotten rid of I haven't had time to post. However, I'm working on an assignment for my Advanced Qualitative Research Methods class that I thought might be interesting and/or useful. The assignment is to try out a qualitative data analysis software called NVivo7. We were required to either try it out in the qualitative computer laboratory on campus (at TWU) or download a trial version of the software to our personal computers.

Being roughly 400 miles from campus and the Qual Lab, I chose to download a trial version of QSR’s NVivo7 qualitative data analysis software. I was excited and looking forward to testing it after Mary Helen Thompson’s presentation in our October class meeting so it is probably easy to imagine my disappointment when the software did not work properly when I downloaded it. Frankly, had the assignment not specifically called for the use of this particular software, I probably would have given up at this stage and not pursued a fix both because of the limited amount of time have for this assignment and because of previous, unsuccessful, frustrating encounters with technical support personell.

However, after two unsuccessful attempts to download, install, and use the trial version of the software, I reluctantly emailed their technical support staff. I was pleasantly surprised (and not a little astonished) to received a timely, helpful response. Unfortunately, the fix they suggested did not work. On my own initiative, I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, this time noting the error messages that appeared as the installation progressed (which I evidently ignored during the first install). I replied to the technical support staff’s email explaining what I’d done and why and what had been the result. In return, I received another pleasant, clearly articulated, helpful email that walked me step-by-step through uninstalling the component software (required for running NVivo but not created or published by QSR) including things to watch out and test for. I followed the directions exactly and am now to give NVivo7 a test on several of the transcripts taken from recordings of the usability test sessions we conducted on our newly designed library web site this summer.

Ah Ha moments

2007-09-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Don't ya just love those "ah ha" moments? You know, when a couple of things in your mind just come together and gel into a completely new idea? Especially when it's an idea that is useful? I've had a couple this afternoon and wanted to share them.

Both ah ha's go goes back to a conversation I had with a classmate recently about the difference between theoretical orientation and theoretical framework in the context of qualitative research reports (e.g. article, dissertations, etc.). We decided that a theoretical framework was a deliberately selected basis or grounding for a research project, usually based on someone else's previous research, and something that may inform one research study but doesn't necessarily inform all of one's research. A theoretical orientation on the other hand, was more like a world view, possibly constructed from one's social and cultural background rather than consciously selected. My classmate called it a lens through which research was viewed. Its something that a researcher can become aware of and acknowledge but not necessarily something that can be entirely set aside and definitely something that will inform all of one's research.

The ah has for me came while I was reading a dissertation that I'm reviewing for class. I'd been trying to apply our definitions of theoretical orientation and framework to this dissertation and I realized first, that the author was using the type of research he did (grounded theory) as a theoretical framework, not something I'd ever considered before. That was the first ah ha.

The second one was that he was using multiple theoretical frameworks. Not only was he using grounded theory as a theoretical framework, he was also using a number of other theories to frame his study. I had also not considered that before, everything I've read about doing qualitative research has talked about a single theoretical foundation for a research project, never more than one!

Research methods

2007-09-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a class in advanced qualitative research methods this fall which I'm thoroughly enjoying. It seems to be dovetailing with my work at the library a bit which is both fun (or else I wouldn't be doing it) and informative because it's forcing me to look at a kind of qualitative research that I don't thing is covered directly in class.

One of the English professors at TAMUCC asked me to speak to her master's level Bibliography and Research Methods class about the different kinds of research. When I asked her whether she was looking for a particular focus she said she wanted a broad overview for them with an emphasis on research methods in the humanities. Well, what an exciting challenge! I know very little about research methods in the humanities having focused on the social sciences mainly with some peeks into the sciences for contrast.

So I began collecting books about humanities research and discovered some very cool things. For instance, research in the humanities places much more emphasis on the hunt for literature on a topic. There are loads of how-to books about how to find resources for humanities research (my personal favorite being Thomas Mann's The Oxford Guide to Library Research) but very few on how to "do" the discovery process and the criteria upon which how that process is judged by peers. Where as in the social sciences "research methods" books focus on a larger number of different aspects of conducting research including developing a research problem/question, selecting data collection and analysis methodologies, theoretical orientations, theoretical frameworks, guidelines for reporting results and judging quality.

At the moment, I think this is because in the social sciences (and the hard sciences), researchers create their own data (e.g. they measure something or transcribe interactions or write notes) whereas in the humanities, researchers don't create their data, they have to go out and find it (e.g. in primary and secondary documents). So the emphasis on "how to do" research in a discipline is focused on where the data comes from.

Anyhow, I managed to create a fairly general matrix comparing qualitative research and quantitative research for the class and spend about 45 minutes talking with them about the differences and similarities. Then I asked them to break into groups of three or four and gave each of them a research "type" from the matrix and asked them to develop a research problem/question and tell the rest of us how they would collect data to answer it. They all worked with the same issue: assessing learning outcomes for students in a first-year learning experience.

I expected pretty superficial responses given that they'd had all of 45 minutes of introduction but they accepted the challenge enthusiastically and came up with some really wonderful answers. What was really cool (for me) was how their answers provided me with material on which to expand my earlier explanations about qualitative and quantitative methods. For instance, one group described how they would use three different sources of data for a qualitative analysis of the issue which allowed me to expand on how qualitative projects are judged on trustworthiness and on some other ways to achieve trustworthiness (since they'd already described triangulation). I was inspired to create this exercise by John W. Creswell's book Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among five approaches (Sage).

I had such a good time teaching this class that I had a hard time stopping and leaving. When I did I met one of the students in the hall. She told me about how much she disliked this class because she wanted to do creative writing, not research. So I told her about narrative research where the researcher's job is to tell the story of an event or phenomenon in an individual's life. I gave her an example from Creswell's book. When I was done there was this amazing spark in her eye. She thanked me enthusiastically and asked if I thought that she could use narrative research for her final project in class.

I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW COOL THAT WAS! There is no way I can describe how that made me feel. It is so thrilling to be able to spark a student's interest, to watch the "ah ha" in their faces. It reminded me of the feeling I had the first day of library school...this is awesome, I love doing this, why didn't I know this was possible?!?! And I can't wait to do it again!

Just when you think you know something

2007-09-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

I've got an assignment to review an article that reports on qualitative research. The one I chose is a grounded theory approach to scholars' use of and decisions to publish in open access journals. After I read through the article once, I was taken aback at how little of what I know about qualitative research was included. There was more explanation of the method than description of the research.

Since I had been thinking of using grounded theory for my mock dissertation proposal later in the semester, I checked out the grounded theory "bible" (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) from the library. What they really say about it (and the way they say it, which, I'm learning, is just as important to qualitative research) isn't what I interpreted from what others (Patton and Creswell in particular)were saying.

Just goes to show that you really need to consult the primary source.

Lessons learned

2007-09-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

When they talk about theory in math, look out! They don't mean theory the way I've always thought about it, or at least the way I've thought about it lately, in terms of theories of education or communication expressed in words with specific epistemological, ontological, and axiological perspectives. They mean formulas and proofs of formulas that prove not only the practical, realistically possible situations but all situations no matter how highly improbable.

Now I suppose you could argue that these two things are fairly similar. Theory in the social sciences are described with words, sometimes highly specialized terms and this is not all that different from theory expressed with numbers and symbols that are also a highly specialized language of sorts.

You could argue that and you'd be right but there is a world of difference in the preparation one needs in order to understand mathematical theory and theory in the social sciences so perhaps I won't appear too naive when I tell you that I didn't REALLY understand the difference until this week.

My degree at TWU requires me to not only complete the core library science courses but also several courses in a cognate area. I chose statistics as my cognate and included in my degree plan a course called Theory of Statistics in which I enrolled this semester. Sadly, and much to my disappointment, I have learned quickly that I am no where nearly prepared to succeed in this class.

And it hasn't been pretty. I started tripping over calculus and trigonometry after about the second class and it went down hill from there, which is disappointing because I was really enjoying learning about statistics from another perspective. However, I've come to my senses, realized that I don't have the mathematical background to understand the theory that underlies the statistical manipulations that programs like SPSS and SAS do for us social scientists, and dropped the class.

Maybe I can be a mathematician or a rocket scientist in my next life!

Podcast for FS6793

2007-09-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

Today I learned how to podcast courtesy of an assignment for my Advanced Qualitative Research Methods class. Here's what I created for them...

Subscribe Free Add to my Page

Research methods and job ads

2007-08-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

I'm writing up a job ad for a vacant position in my department today. I've been thinking about the skills and qualifications that I'm looking for and it occurs to me that one of the things that makes hiring difficult is that we (I) typically don't think much about how I'll measure the qualities that I'm looking for in a new employee. For instance, if I say that I'm looking for someone who is self-motivated and has a positive attitude, how will I determine whether my applicants have those qualities? That's not a question I would have asked myself before I started learning about research methods.

Before, I would have probably tried to come up with some way to quantify things like supervisory experience and familiarity with Windows Office software which are fairly easily quantified into measurements that have an ordinal relationship. But I would also have tried to quantify things like self-motivation and positive attitude which I think is much more difficult, not to mention subjective. This time I'd like to take a more qualitative approach to analyzing resumes, applications, reference letters and interviews (and helping the members of my search committee to do the same).

Usability and the new library web site

2007-08-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is it! The weekend that we take down the old library web site and publish the new one. It's a project I've worked hard on all summer.

In July, along with some colleagues, I conducted usability tests on the new (unpublished) site. Then I reviewed the recordings of the usability sessions as well as the comments that my colleagues and I made after each usability test session and comments from the library staff and compiled a list of changes to the new site. The changes were mostly based on the things that our test participants had trouble with during the usability testing although some were based on staff commments and research that the Information Architecture Working Group did as they planned the new site. Finally, a number of us in the library have worked very hard to implement those changes in time for the preparations for the beginning of the fall semester to be completed.

As of Monday, August 13, 2007 you can see our new web site at http://rattler.tamucc.edu. The parts I worked on most are the Search All Databases pages (you can see them by clicking on the "Find Articles" link on the library homepage) and the Find Journals list (you can see this by clicking on the "Find" drop down menu at the top of the page and selecting Journals). Unfortunately, because our contracts with online information resource vendors require us to limit access to them to students, staff, and faculty of our university, you probably won't be able to see much.

Anyway, I'm fairly proud of what we've accomplished this summer and happy to have some data with which to work this fall. I'd welcome any comments that anyone cares to make about the site.

Getting carried away

2007-07-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden I'm racking up a list of fun things to do this fall. I responded to a call for articles on serials and electronic resources management and social sciences data archives in a new library science encyclopedia. Don't know that I'll get invited to actually write them but it sounded like a good opportunity (especially since the articles would be refereed).

I also found out that I could apply (and would probably be accepted) to work as a Graduate Teaching or Research Assistant in the School of Library and Information Studies at TWU. That sounds like GREAT fun and would fill in a gap in my vitae (I need some teaching experience).

I'm taking two classes this fall, Theory of Statistics and Advanced Qualitative Research Methods.

And I still have tons of data from the usability study I just completed at work to analyse. I'd like to write an article (or two) based on those results.

I'm also chair of the Library School Outreach Committee for NASIG this year. I had to step down from chairing their Awards & Recognition Committee because the Executive Board felt (correctly) that I wouldn't be able to give both committees my full attention.

And I'm still reviewing reference books for Library Journal and the occasional serials related book for The Serials Librarian.

I guess it sounds a little like I'm bragging about all of this (and maybe I am a bit) but my intention when I started writing this was to try to "think aloud" about which of these opportunities I should accept (if and when they're offered). 'Course some of them I've already committed to. I have a bad habit of taking on more than I can do which I thought I had under control (partly by taping a sign that said "NO" on my computer monitor) but which I've obviously let run rampant again this summer.

Book reviews

2007-07-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

I found a couple of the book reviews I've written recently and thought you might be interested in reading them.

One is for the Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music.

And the other is for the Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion(you have to scroll down a bit to find this one).

ALA 2007 – Eye to I: Visual Literacy Meets Information Literacy

2007-06-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

I like this session because I left my computer at the hotel on Sunday (because we were going to the National Gallery of Art later in the afternoon) and had to take notes on a very small piece of paper and that gave me time to think. Actually, I hadn’t planned to take notes at all but apparently I’m physically incapable of not writing down the interesting things that I hear. Anyway…

The presenters were Cindy Cunningham who is Director of Media Metadata and Cataloging at Corbis Corp.., Danuta Nitecki who is Associate University Librarian at Yale University, and Loanne Snavely who is Head of Instructional Programs at Penn State University and their presentation was very well organized. They began by explaining that visual literacy is important because images have become so prevalent in our lives and will in all likelihood continue to be. Thus, visual literacy will rapidly become as important as information literacy (by which they mean textual information literacy).

There are several characteristics of visual images that make them more complex to seek and find. First is ownership; copyright of a visual image is often held by multiple entities including (using a photograph of an artwork as an example) the artist, the owner of the artwork, and the photographer. The second complexity is in making images accessible (e.g. cataloging them) because of the subjective nature of interpreting the symbols represented in an image; much more subjective than the interpretation of text for which we have much greater consensus on meaning.

How’s this for a great job? At Corbis there is a team of people who scan the media (newspapers, TV, etc.) for trends and then they search for images that have some meaning or representation for the trend AND as many words as they can come up with to describe them…including making up words!

They shared a couple of web site URLs with us as examples of trends in photographic images:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

http://www.video.google.com/videoplay?docid=824643990976635143

Then they asked, so what is visual literacy and why do we need to describe it? The answer is

- to gauge student development

- to evaluate teaching effectiveness

- to measure people’s ability to use them (visual images)

The problem is that there are no standards to describe what the “right”, “necessary” level of visual literacy is. Danuta Nitecki presented a rubric that they have developed as a potential standard (FMI see ). The disadvantage to their rubric is that it doesn’t address or measure the ability to find images.

Cindy Cunningham mentioned that there are studies about image seeking. That made me wonder whether any of the methods and frameworks that have been applied to (textual) information seeking having been applied to image seeking (e.g. Lynne Westbrook’s mental models or learning theory). It reminded me of my first year in library school when I was so interested in researching the availability of visual images on the web, in particular art images.

ALA 2007 - The Future of Information Retrieval

2007-06-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

This session was composed of four speakers. The first was Marydee Ojala who edits ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals and blogs at http://onlineinsider.net/.

The questions she addressed were:
Are there philosophical differences between information professionals and end-users?
How does this affect searchability and findability?

IPs enjoy the search and sharing info between themselves BUT this leads us to forget to stop, overlook things, and, it begins to take longer. On the other hand, users want to find things, they don’t care about sources. The web makes searching pervasive but also unstable and had produced a culture of ‘gaming the system’ among publishers and providers.

In the future, the worst case scenario would be a highly controlled information environment where price doesn’t guarantee quality: shopping trumps research. In the best case, interfaces become intuitive, there are no licencing wars, high quality information is easily available.

The next presenter was Jay Datema, Technology Editor for Library Journal.

He talked about how “search[ing] has been commoditized” where the cost is privacy and people are making money from it, however, search syndication is a benefit to those who know what they’re looking for.

Sites like del.icio.us make it possible to find out what people are reading quickly and easily (presumably that makes it better than searching). See my del.icio.us page at http://del.icio.us/sarahwsutton

Authentication (‘s ability to preserve the privacy of the searcher) is the future of searching. There is the growing expectation of finding the past in the search (e.g. backfiles).

He mentioned Zotero as a means of creating a personal digital library. Note that zotero is one of my del.icio.us bookmarks in my ToRead tag category.

Here’s an interesting idea: Grokker as a federated search mechanism (some of the SUNY libraries are using it for that purpose).

Next, Mike Buschman, Technology Evangelist, Live Search Selection (Microsoft) spoke on The Future of Information Retrieval: When all books are online which seemed to me to be a bit preachy and sale-pitch-ish.

http://get.live.com/

MS Live Search Academic. About 5% of the worlds information is online, he talked primarily about the Live Search and the Book Search products.

In the future direction section of his presentation he mentions “unlocking non-textual information”. He mentioned music instruction books as an example but I immediately thought of the visual information seeking session (Eye to I), that I attended yesterday.

Questions to consider:
What is the atomic unit of the book?
What is a work?
What is the future of the physical library?
How is the movement to digital information going to affect what library professionals do?

Finally, R. David Lankes http://www.DavidLankes.org (LIS Faculty) presented on The future of information retrieval: Finding conversations

I realize that these notes have been getting progressively more disjointed, probably because it’s early, it’s the third day of the conference, he’s the last of four speakers.

The failure of Reference EXTRACT: mining data from reference transactions (which had been cleaned of any personally identifying info) and then calculated frequency of appearance of databases.

Miwa’s Question Paradox: people ask the same questions at the beginning and end of a search with completely different intentions

McClure’s Citation Strategy: in order to get cited, say it first, say it last, or say it stupid

Note: he made both of these up based on things people he knows have done and/or said.

http://iis.syr.edu/Projects/PNOpen What he means by ‘conversation’ has to do with this project to decompose reference transactions using complexity theory and network theory as frameworks…the conversation is the network created by the paths between utterances in these decomposed transactions.

Find the paper they wrote called, “Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation”.

The web (etc.) makes a great deal of “conversational” data available.

Book as “conversation” (his definition) because the author had to organize the info it contains into chapters. Which is an interesting idea to compare to the NASIG keynote speaker about conversations in books as defined by marginal notes…a conversation in the more traditional sense: people communicating ideas in writing over time.

ALA 2007 - Utilizing learning theory in online environments.

2007-06-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

I arrived at this session late so I don't have the structure of the talk in front of me (so to speak) and can't structure this post in the same way as I have the preceding ones. Here are some of the ideas she presented:

Goals of learning in any discipline are the same, learning to think like, process and interpret data like a [enter discipline here].

There are lots of different types of learning (visual, auditory, kinesthic, etc.) and you can tell by observing them what their preferred learning styles are. By 'learning' from them we can create richer online learning evironments.

Most of this presentation is focused on library instruction and virtual reference.

Current educational theories (popular now):
(1) The idea that students learn in social groups; they learn from listening to each other and talking about things.
(2) Situated learning means that the learning takes place in the same place in which the knowledge will be later used; learning in context.
(3) Brain based learning or "ten minutes on, ten minutes off", in other words sharing some information and then giving the brain time "off" to absorb it.
(4) Behaviorism; negative feedback doesn't work.

A combination of face to face learning and online learning works best; helps to create an ongoing conversation which is (again) how Millennials learn.

She addressed generational differences in terms of it informing the learning process.

It seems to me that a lot of this has to do with non-verbal communication online...which sounds like an oxymoron until you think about "places" like second life and the presenters' comments about the changes in online communication that occur once the communicators have met face to face, for instance, think about the way you IM with someone or read a message from them (be it email or a blog comment, etc.) and how careful you are about what you say when you don't "know" them in person compared to how when you communicate with someone you do "know" in person and can almost hear the tone of their voice and can more easily tell when they're being sincere and when they're being sarcastic.

Interesting observation: I seem to engage in more reflection about the speaker's topic when I don't have an agenda for the presentation.

The Power Point for this presentation will be posted on the ALA website.

ALA 2007 - LRRT Research Forum: Information Seeking from Childhood through College

2007-06-23T13:13:00.001-07:00

Note: LRRT is debuting a research mentor program; find the link and more info see their website (after a few days). Also, to volunteer for an LRRT committee, contact the incoming president soon.

The four programs in this session were ordered by age of the participants.

First was Lynne McKechnie (the I School at UW) speaking on “Spiderman is not for babies” The Boys and reading problem from the perspective of the boys themselves.

Boys lag behind girls in standardized tests of reading skills. McKechnie conducted semi structured interviews with boys aged 7 to 12 and made lists of all of their reading materials (including books, videos). They found that boys are reading. What they are reading is different between boys and girls.

This was a qualitative study and her results were presented in the voices of the boys who were interviewed. There were lots of quotes to illustrate the findings. Some of them were collected by (i.e. interviews were conducted by) her students (presumably MLS or PhD students). I would have been interested in a hearing a little bit more about the researchers’ perspectives in order to get a feel for their research paradigms

Melissa Gross (Florida State) presented next. Her presentation was entitled The Information Seeking Behaviors of School Children” which was part of a larger study that used both qualitative and quantitative methods which was published in the form of a book by Scarecrow Press. She focused on the qualitative results in this presentation. In it she compares self-generated and imposed information seeking. Some of the children were excited and happy to be asked to find some piece of information by a teacher or classmate but while this was looked on positively in the younger children it was perceived as not so positive by older children.

She began by defining the terms in her research question and the roles the people in her study generally took. She used focused in-depth interviews with seven teachers from one school including teachers, students (between the ages of 4 and 12), and the school library media specialist. She also spent some time explaining the limitations placed on the study by the ages of the children participants. She presented her results in her power point slides and provided anecdotal evidence (the childrens’ stories about their reading) verbally.

Here’s a thought: I wonder how one creates trustworthiness in this kind of study. Can you still use member checking with young children? How? Maybe through triangulation. I’ll have to look at her book to find out I s’pose.

It will also be interesting to read all of the presenters’ published research reports. It seemed to me that they presented here in language and terms that would be accessible to this audience.

The third presentation was on tweens’ information seeking behavior. Tweens are ages 9 to 13. Along with this information, he described some of their other characteristics and context. What he’s presenting is part of a larger study by Karen Fisher called “Talking to You” and had to do with finding out why people prefer to turn to each other for information, particularly for what she calls “everyday life information seeking.” In order to gather data they planned a “Tween Day” sort of one day camp which they repeated three times at three different locations (one on campus – UW, an urban outreach ministry, and a suburban elementary school).

They were asking things like what types of everyday information do they perceive a need for? How do they seek everyday information? What barriers do they encounter? (and four more that I missed because the slide passed two quickly).

They used focus groups, creative interactive web-based exercises, individual interviews all of which were recorded to collect data. He didn’t talk much (nor did the other presenters) about how they analyzed their data. He presented results and quotes from transcripts both in his power point slides and verbally. He gave a hint of their data analysis in describing their need to ‘decode’ some of the tweens’ terms (“stuff”); he talked about coding the transcript of the group interviews.

It’s interesting that, so far, none of the information sharing is happening in electronic environments. Whoops! Just as I write this, one of the quotes on one of his slides included a reference to chat rooms.

As a side note, he is a very engaging speaker and obviously passionate about tweens and his research…so much so, in fact, that he’s having trouble stopping.

Here’s an interesting finding (that they’re going to explore further): when asked what librarians can teach you to use to find information, newspapers and magazines and articles were the category that got the fewest votes.

Lynn Westbrook presented last on “Google the Random Stuff: Mental Models of Academic Information Seeking”. Her purpose for the study was to use mental models to examine information seeking; how they visualize and conceptualize about information when they’re dealing with an imposed query. The sample for the study was purposive and self-selected and bounded by matriculation level and academic achievement. She did in-depth interviews and observations, transcribed it all and used HyperResearch to code and analyze the data. Then she presented the components of some of her participants’ mental models.

She presented three different perspectives from the students in her study using quotes. Then she defined mental models and presented the advantages and disadvantages of their use as a frame work for research as well as how they’re used and how they develop. She spent most of her time expanding on the models that emerged from her data analysis.

Hmm, it would be interesting to look for how and if mental models and competency theory are related in the literature.

ALA 2007 - Library Research Round Table Research Forum, part two

2007-06-23T08:48:00.000-07:00

In the second segment of this session, Laurie Bonnici (Drexel), Lynne Watson (Florida State) presented on "Other place as library". What they were interested in was do "other places" compete with libraries (using Oldenburg’s “Third Place” (1989) as their theoretical framework).

They used unobtrusive observation between 4/2006 – 8/2006 and a web based survey in February 2007 as their methods.

They presented some of the demographics from their survey and one of those was generation: 1 silent, 12 boomers, 12 x’s, 90 millennials.
Only 3% of the respondents to the survey given in the coffee house were using library resources but 3% also said they would like assistance with using library resources.

Most of their respondents stayed in the library between one and five hours (50% roughly).

Some of their reasons for not using the library:
- have a computer at home/work
- takes too long & pay to print
- internet service is poor
- no wifi
- have wireless laptop, don’t need to go to the library

In the library café most get coffee and move to the library (50%+).

They went through this presentation so fast that I only got about half of their points, need to look to see if they publish this somewhere (proceedings?).

Finally, Marie Radford (Rutgers), Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) presented the results of a multi year (10/05 – 9/07) project looking at virtual reference. Four phases: focus groups, analysis of live chat reference interviews, online surveys, telephone interviews. I’m not sure what their research question was, from the discussion I think that it has to do with the success of virtual reference transactions and, specifically, the success when the librarian clarifies the user’s query as compared to when the librarian doesn’t do so. [Query clarification = reference interview.]

Their results are available on the web at OCLC in a URL that ended with /synchronicity.

ALA 2007 - Library Research Round Table Research Forum

2007-06-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

This session included three separate presentations by library school faculty (for the most part).

The first presentation was by a group of researchers from ProQuest (Joanna Marco, John Law, Serena Rosenham). I've seen John Law present these results before on a webinar earlier this spring so most of it was not new to me. But they have some really interesting results:

Ethnographic field study of how students seek information. Their research has gone through several phases since September 2006. Most participants so far have been undergraduates but they’re going to target graduate students in the next phase.

Students were actively engaged in a class research assignment and were studied onsite and remotely (Userview, which is a usability testing software for use on the Internet). The remote observation worked better because it allowed them great geographic coverage and because they obtained recordings of each session and finally because it allowed the student to relax and act more naturally without an observer in the room with them.

They used Facebook to recruit participants. A flyer was placed on Facebook and a survey was used to give them further information about the study and to filter for the characteristics they needed. They included grads, undergrads, in a variety of disciplines, and with a variety of skill levels.

How do students decide which resources to use for their research?
- Students ARE using library resources when we teach them to do so in the context of the course and at the point of their need; story of the fourth year student who used library resources but had only been doing so since a librarian had visted their classroom to show them how to do so.
- Endorsement of instructor; story about the 3rd year Biology student who used JSTOR for her biology research.
- Brand awareness has an impact on what students use to start their research; story about the student who hesitated a long time over selecting a database and spoke about recognizing ProQuest.
- Google

How do students use library research?
- 95% of parts engaged library resources for their research
- They often work with multiple resources at the same time; average number of tabs open at a time was between 5 and 12.
- Abstracts are essential in identifying relevant articles (even when the full text is available)
- They have no serious difficulties using databases once they find them

Chief inhibitors to success in using library resources:
- lack of awareness of resources; Law interprets from this a need for libraries to increase marketing efforts
- difficulty navigating library website to locate resources
- students search the library catalog for articles because the search box is front and center on the library web page
- authentication requirements and difficulties create a barrier to entrance to library resources and an obstacle; also lack of awareness of the purpose or even existence of authentication

How students REALLY use Google:
- some 90% of researchers use internet search engines for their research according to Outsell and OCLC data; but in the case of this study it was 32%. What’s important is HOW they are using it
o for quick answers and definitions
o uses it as sufficient when quality isn’t a concern
o because they’re insufficiently aware of library resources
o and because they’ve had a bad experience using library resources (like ab authentication barrier)
- when they used google they were less effective than they were when they used library resources (in terms of obtaining quality content)
- as a handy look-up tool
- to get specific answers

Their end user surveys support these findings. They had about 10,000 respondents who were invited from ProQuest websites and from Facebook to take the survey.
- they recognize that the library has higher quality content
- and that the library has more content
- but google’s interface is easier to use
- prefer to use library database for academic research
- prefer to use google for quick look ups

How does social networking sites factor into student research?
- for the most part, they don’t
- they use it for communication between group members when working together on a project

I wonder what’s going to happen to this project and ProQuest’s other research projects in light of the merger with CSA?

Informing the future of MARC: An empirical approach

2007-06-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

Bill Moen (UNT) and Shawne Miksa (UNT) presented a research study in which they examined the use of MARC by catalogers in order to provide empirical evidence of that use and contribute to a discussion within the profession about future uses of MARC. Bill and Shawne presented their research and some results. Sally talked about “MARC Futures”.

Moen and Miksa's strictly empirical approach is interesting to me in light of the book I’ve been reading lately, Research Methods for Information which emphasizes qualitative research being more accessible to practitioners in information professions than qualitative research.

Detailed information about the study is available at http://www.mcdu.unt.edu will include the program ppt and handout. Bill noted that they will be making the record parser and MySQL database that they used for this project in an open source environment so that other researchers could work with their own record sets and ask some of the interesting questions that the audience raised.

Some of the areas and characteristics of MARC in which Sally McCallum expects to see change are:

Its granularity; there is the potential for a reduction in the number fields and subfields.

Its versatility; MARC has the potential for “community profiling” (by which she means models I think), in other words it could be used in subsets for specific purposes like FRBR, MODS, etc.

Extensibility; this seems pretty similar to versatility to me, but I think she means not just creating subsets of fields but using them for new purposes, e.g. extending their use. For example, it has the potential to link rights information to a bib record.

Hierarchy support: MARC has a little but not much ability to define hierarchies; she predicts the development of other means of doing this.

Crosswalks (data element mappings): they are expensive in terms of time required to create and maintain them.

Tools: the MARC tool kit provides the tools for transferring records from another format to or from MARC but not between each other and Sally envisions development of additional tools using MARCXML.

Cooperative management: there is already a lot of participation in MARC via lists and she expects that to continue

Pervasive: MARC is used globally and will probably continue to be so through XML.

The interesting thing about this presentation was the juxtaposition of what were basically two presentations, Moen and Miksa’s MARC research project and McCallum’s predictions about its future. It seems to me at first glance that the two were pretty much in agreement with each other in terms of the future of MARC as a standard for making bibliographic description available to users that supports their needs. This basic purpose is unchanging even while MARC itself will continue to evolve in reaction to advances in technology and newly developing needs like the ones that Sally mentioned crosswalks, improved description of hierarchies, and bringing together of disparate data.

‘Research Methods in Information’ chapters 9 and 10

2007-06-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

These two chapters cover experimental research (10) and ethnographic research (11), which, of course, are at opposite ends of the research spectrum from one another. It’s an interesting contrast and, after having noticed this, I realized that there is a similar contrast between the first two chapters of this part of the book (case studies and surveys). The contrast is greater between experimental and ethnographic research and it appears as if she is preparing us for this great contrast by allowing us to compare and contrast case studies and survey research first; sort of easing the reader toward both ends of the spectrum.

True to her word (in the introduction), she discusses the unique aspects of conducting ethnographic research in a virtual community. Not differentiating it from ethnographic research in other communities but providing insight into the particular issues unique to a virtual environment. What interested me most here was a set of qualities she uses (borrowed) to define a community in a virtual environment. First because she doesn’t say (and I wondered) whether there are also accepted characteristics that define a ‘community’ in a non-virtual environment (other than the obvious physicals ones). Are they so obvious that ‘anyone’ will recognize them? I think it would be interesting to go back and look at that in depth.

And second, in discussing another problem posed by virtual communities, that of observing the personal identities of community members because they are more easily hidden in a virtual community. She says, “Dissembodied communication makes it very difficult for a researcher to engage in participant observation” (p.120). I have to disagree with that a bit. I think that the characteristics of an individual that a researcher can observer are different in a virtual community vs. a physical one but they certainly still exist beyond the verbal/textual. For example, one might as easily observe the communication behaviors exhibited by members of a virtual community as one could in a physical community. The means of communication may differ (speech vs. text) but the act of communicating is happening.

‘Research Methods in Information’ chapters 7 & 8

2007-06-23T04:51:00.000-07:00

Chapters seven and eight begin Part two of the book in which the author describes a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods beginning with case studies (chapter seven) and surveys (chapter eight). In each chapter the author describes and defines the method (both what it is and what it is not) and its important features then she provides further description of the process.

The case in a case studies must have clearly defined boundaries. The purpose of the study is also important in that it provides a means of keeping the researcher on track with the project rather than veering off in search of answers less relevant to the research question. Intrinsic (to gain understanding), instrumental (to examine a phenomenon), and multi-case.

Continued emphasis on the researchers’ responsibility. Added emphasis on the need for structure (in the form of a well defined means of organizing data) that does not interfere with or constrain the emergent process of qualitative research. She also covers the accepted means of establishing trustworthiness (in qualitative methods) and reliability (in quantitative methods).

Her chapter on case studies reminded me of what I learned about Action Research in a class this past spring. In Action Research, the researcher is focusing on one particular case in context not with the intention of generalizing results outside of the case but in order to better understand the inner workings of the community of stake holders involved and, perhaps, a particular phenomenon within that community with, in the case of Action Research, the added purpose of allowing the community to solve a community problem.

Is Action Research a type of case study? I don’t think so. I think Action Research is similar to case study and that, perhaps, case study would be one way of approaching an AR project but certainly not the only way. I’m still struggling with where AR fits into my larger picture of research as a whole.

Survey research allows one to “study relationships between specific variables”. Descriptive surveys seek to describe a situation by revealing relationships between the variables while explanatory surveys seek to explain the relationship between variables in terms of cause and effect (although there is a lot of debate about how far one can go towards saying variable A caused variable B since survey research does not seek to isolate variables).

I also found a citation to a study in this chapter (she uses it as an example of an explanatory survey) that I think will be very pertinent to my research into how members of an academic community seek information in electronic environments. [Tabatabai, D. and Shore, B.M. (2005) How experts and novices search the Web. Library and Information Science Research 27(20:222-48.]

"Research Methods in Information" chapters 5 & 6

2007-06-19T17:33:00.001-07:00

I'm obviously going to have to step this up if I plan to be done with my "official" review by next Tuesday...sigh...I guess that's what long plane rides are for, right?

Chapter five is called 'Sampling' and details the differences between sampling for a qualitative project and sampling for a quantitative project. She presents and describes a couple of both probability and purposive sampling. The only thing I missed in the first read is the difference between stratified random sampling and cluster sampling. I should know that already but didn't pick up on the differences in the text.

Chapter six is entitled 'Ethics in research' and is very appropriately placed at the end of the first section of the book that provides an overview of basic research and places it in context. Here she covers the basic points of research ethics including informed consent and the difference between annonymity and confidentiality and the importance of making promises that you can keep.

At the end of the first section of the book, I have to say that I'm impressed. Impressed particularly with the sensible organization of the book, it's clear structure, and the exercises at the end of each chapter. If I ever get to teach a research methods course, this is the textbook I'll use.

Random observation: on p. 71-72 she says, "there is an argument that observing people in public places needs no permission or consent as their behavior, by definition, is public and therefore available for all to see, study, and analyze." In theory, I agree with this, but in practice I have to wonder what all those people talking on their cell phones in libraries, airports, grocery stores, and so on would have to say about a researcher who recorded the "public" portion of those conversations for analysis and publication.

Need a laugh?

2007-06-19T08:15:00.001-07:00

Try this librarian humor....

'Research Methods in Information' chapters 3 & 4

2007-06-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, yeah, I'm a little behind in writing up my notes. But I have continued to read so here are my notes on chapters three through six.

Chapter three is called 'Defining the research'. Here she gives the reader a 'pre-operational structure' of research with descriptions of each part of the structure as well as continuing to use a particular case as an example. Emphasis is giving to the problems inherent in trying to 'prove' a hypothesis. There is a really good, concise, clearly written section on defining variables. Finally, she clarifies the distinction between the goals and the aims of the research project.

In chapter four she describes the usefulness of a written research proposal no matter what the contact of the research project. I particularly enjoy (and, I confess, agree with) the emphasis that she places on putting the responsibility for the research project squarely on the researcher. In this chapter, she does so in the context of the care that the researcher should take in complying with all requirements applicable to writing the research proposal.

Some of my favorite quotes from this chapter are:

"Whatever choices you make you will need to demonstrate that you understand the nature of the choices you have made." (p.54) Further down the page, she alludes to this again in the context of qualitative data analysis.

"You are opening a can of worms [in undertaking a research project] as soon as you begin to ask questions, do not expect to find all of the answers." (p.56)

NASIG 2007: final thoughts

2007-06-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

I attended two other sessions that I either arrived late for or was focused on other things while attending.

The first was Bob Schufreider's session on "Making sense of your usage statistics" which I'm sorry I didn't arrive on time for because I am very interested in making better use of our usage statistics. Bob works for MPS Technologies who makes the ScholarlyStats product that we've just trialed.

The second was the final key note speaker, Daniel Chudnov from the Library of Congress. His basic theme was the need for lowering barriers between libraries and everything else on the web. He points out that every major media outlet is using dynamic service links which cries out for OpenURL, they’re doing it and we (libraries)’re not.

I'm really disappointed not to be able to access all of the conference handouts. For the first time this year, NASIG put program handouts on the web using Moodle which is very exciting for me since I tend to take notes on my laptop in sessions anyway and its lovely to have a copy of the speaker's materials at the tip of my fingers. But this was obviously not meant to be since, try as I will, I can't get the site to either recongize me or send me the email that contains directions for resetting the password they gave me.

However that's the ONLY negative note about this year's conference. The venue was lovely and convenient; the programs were timely and interesting and offered great variety. And the attendees were just as pleasant as always.

NASIG 2007: Education trifecta: win attention, place knowledge, show understanding

2007-06-17T12:49:00.000-07:00

This session was presented by Virginia Taffurelli, Betsy Redmond, Steve Black. I was fortunate enough to be assigned to introduce them and thus had the opportunity to talk a bit with Steve Black, whom I hadn't met before, about the lack of attention to serials and electronic resources in library school curriculum. He teaches one of very few courses dedicated to this topic (among ALA accredited LIS programs in North America).

Virginia and Betsy presented some of the basics of developing and delivering course content. Virginia spent most of her time describing the use of course delivery software (WebCT, Blackboard, Moodle), and Betsy focused on practical tips for delivering a CE course. Their focus was a CE course in fundamentals of acquisitions for ALTCS.

Steve reviewed the syllabus for his course (which he made available to us in print). He talked about his reasons for writing his own textbook; he had contacted Nisonger to ask if he was going to revise his 1998 text and Nisonger had said no. It was published in November 2006. Prior to that he had used a copy of the manuscript in classes for two years and solicited feedback from the students which he found very useful.

He covered the objectives for the course which include a small module on cataloging a serial (they catalog on paper in class then as homework they compare what they’ve done to a MARC record online).

I really enjoyed this presentation and hope that someone follows up next year to answer some of my remaining questions: why is LIS education seemingly ignoring serials and e-resources management? what is covered in other serials courses (or modules within courses)?

NASIG 2007: How does digitization affect scholarship?

2007-06-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

This was probably the best session I attended.

Ithaka, http://ithaka.org/research, is an organization that studies the advance of technology and how it can/should be managed. Their mission is to help academic institutions to adapt to and use technology.

The presented, Roger Schonfeld, started by asking the audience what characteristics a scholarly journal should have (format, aggregated?, open access?, indexed where?, commercial or non-profit?, sustainability) in order to develop a framework for analyzing the affects of digitization.

Two side markets = a system comprised of at least two user groups who need each other which is characterized by a platform (or intermediary) that balances the interests of both groups (sides of the market). He used the credit card network as an example where the merchants and the card holders are the two groups and the card companies are the platform or intermediary. The concept of two-sided markets is the framework that Ithaka used to examine their question about the affect of digitization on scholarship.

The two sides of the scholarly journal are readers and authors. One of the motivations that operates between the two groups is quality (high quality authors attracts high quality readers and high quality readers attract high quality authors). This characteristic is static in relation to the format in which the journal is published (the exchange mechanism = format = platform that joins the two groups).

In the traditional pricing model, the reader side involves subscription fees and on the author side are pages charges and advertising fees. The question is how are/should they be distributed?

Demand side
What are the sources of value of a journal on the (librarian) side? (audience participation)
- research/curricular support
- impact factor
- use
- ARL ranking
- Preservation of the record of scholarship
- Accreditation
- Platform stability
- Areas of collection emphasis
- Peer review
What are the sources of value of a journal on the reader side?
- findable
- usefulness and credibility of content
- currency
- author quality
- accessibility
- relative importance to field
- do they publish in it?
- Peer review
- Indexing
- Impact factor (as a proxy for quality)
Supply side
What are the sources of value of a journal from the advertiser’s perspective?
- number of subscriptions
- quality of reader
- reader’s interest in products
- cost
- findability
What are the souces of value of a journal from the author’s perspective
- reputation with colleagues
- how widely read / cited
- circulation
- speed of publication
- peer review
- impact factor
- cost to submit
- marketing and promotion

Findings from a survey of 4100 faculty members about the characteristics important to authors:
The most important characteristic was circulation (80% of participants sad that this characteristic was very important), no cost to publish (65%), preservation is assured (60%), highly selective (50%), accessible in developing world (45%), available for free (35%).
- authors submit to journals that can maximize the impact of their work on their field
- some disciplinary differences in the above data
- how has the impact of a journal changed in recent years? (digitization, more widely accessible)

Their research question is how does digitization effect the system of scholarly communication?

They’ve collected data (cited by and citing characteristics of 100 journals in each of three disciplines) and are in the process of data analysis which should be published/available in the late summer or early fall. They used regression analysis (Poisson process).

Results:
- the higher the frequency of citation, the lower the number of citations in that article (graph).
- digitizeding the journal-title years has increased inbound citation by between 7 and 17% (confidence interval)
- the effect grows steadily as the materials are available online longer
- different sources of online availability (channels) offer different effects; e.g. 3-15% increase occurs when there is one channel and 8-18% increase occurs when there are a large number of channels through which a journal is available
- questions raised: Are some channels more effective than others? Do some channels yield more impact? Is wide availability the key?
Results when the data are restricted to 1995-2005 in order to look at effects of/on born digital journals
- there is a strong and significant effect from digitization (but more analysis is needed)
- the publisher web site is not always the optimal distribution mechanism to increase citations
- longer embargos decrease the ability of a give channel to increase citations
- more questions: disciplinary variation? Effects of source item year of publication?

Their preliminary conclusion is that digitization does have a storng and significant effect on scholars’ ability to find and cite revelant reference give an advantage to
He’s obviously passionate about his topic and a very natural speaker which makes him very engaging. This is a fairly sophisticated research project and he did a very good job of explaining it in terms that were pertinent and understandable to librarians; partly because of the really good questions that the audience asked. Probably this will be my favorite session. It would be interesting to see what else Roger and his colleagues have done.

NASIG 2007: Hurry up please. It’s time – State of Emergency … aka The Paranoia Presentation

2007-06-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

A library pundit is the best way I can describe Karen Schneider. She is one of those people who are blessed with a quick, sarcastic wit and a well developed intellect to support it. I enjoyed her presentation very much although I’m not entirely sure that I agree with all of her ideas. Please also bear in mind that this was the first session of the second day of the conference and, in addition to not being quite awake yet, I was fretting about the three meetings I had to chair during the rest of the day.

• From the perspective of a writer/essayist, what she calls the “production process of the serials ecology” includes: reflection, research, revision, work shopping, submission, revision, layout and printing.
• Relevant features of the ecology include: a nominal income to editor, author’s compensation is a year’s subscription to the publication but also provides the chance for her to write about a topic that is important to her.
• Memory work: history is built from artifacts as opposed to the memories of the people who lived it. She proposes that librarians work is memory work which gives it a curatorial aspect.
• She quoted Andrew Abbott from his book The System of Professions (which I heartily recommend if you haven’t read it) who says that a profession has (or should have) “complete, legally established control” over its domain. This, she maintains, is the basis of what she calls the ‘state of emergency’ in libraries since our control of collections and collection building (if, indeed, we ever had it) is being eroded or encroached upon by entities outside the profession.
• She maintains that particularly in the area of serials, we’re particularly susceptible to this. For example the publishers with whom we’re made “big deals.”
• Some of the concerns that she’s currently mulling are
o Why are we (libraries) allowing Google to create a proprietary collection of the world’s books? (apparently Google’s contracts with both the University of California and the University of Michigan include a clause that keeps the institutions from delivering the content that they’ve allowed Google to digitize to anyone other than Google, something I didn’t know). Same with Microsoft’s book project. AND Google search doesn’t reach the Microsoft book “silo” and vice versa, you can’t access content in Google books using any other search engine. I find this incredibly worrisome. The open content alliance is an non-proprietary version of the Google book search.
o Why do we (libraries) need to pay an organization an annual fee to give us temporary access on a remote server to the content that we already own? I’d say because our users are requiring us to.
o Why does Time-Warner have to be so greedy? For example, the recent postal rate increase impacts small presses to a much larger extent than it does publishers like Time-Warner who nas negotiated a lower postal rate. This is damaging to the serials ecology.
• Removing information from the public record is a concern of hers that she illustratd with the closing of the EPA libraries which she sees as a part of a larger movement of information being lost from the public/historical record. LOCKSS/CLOCKSS is a library grown innovation designed to protect the interests of librarianship and is . There is no license to create a “LOCKSS box”, it’s free, open-source software.
• Lessons:
o The right path is not always instinctive, obvious, or well marked
o ignore the dazzle and read the fine print
o bring our values (as librarians) to the table
o possession IS the law

• Interesting thought: people slam Disney over the 2003 copyright ruling but don’t blink an eye at apple who distributes a proprietary sound format for ipods. What makes Apple different from Disney?

ALA 2007 schedule

2007-06-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

After a lot of time examining maps and program details, I think I've finally nailed dow my ALA schedule. This is not as easy as it sounds since often there are three or four interesting sessions going on at once and location and distance between venues must be factored in as must time to visit with vendors in the exhibit hall AND at least a little sightseeing. Anyhow, here it is...

Saturday, June 23
8 - 10 am -- Informing the future of MARC: and empirical approach
(This one's being given by a library school prof of mine, Bill Moen)
10:30 - 12 noon -- Research: A user experience
12 - 1 pm -- Ebsco Acadmic Library Luncheon
3:30 - 3 pm -- Information seeking behavior from childhood through college
4 - 6 pm -- either The ALCTS electronic resources pricing discussion group or Utilizing learning theory in online environments depending on where the latter one takes place
7 - ? -- dinner

Sunday, June 24
7:30 - 8:30 am -- Alexander Street Press breakfast
9 - 10:30 -- Exhibits
10:30 - 12 noon -- New minds, new approaches: Juried papers by LIS students
11:30 - 1 pm -- CSA / RefWorks Lunch 'n learn
1:30 - 3:30 -- Eye to I: Visual literacy meets information literacy
3:30 - 5:30 -- National Gallery
6:30 - 8:30 -- Ex Libris customer reception

Monday, June 25
8 - 10 am -- The furture of information retrieval
10:30 - 12 noon -- Four star research
11:30 - 1 pm -- ProQuest luncheon
1:30 - 3 pm -- Fresh approaches in service delivery: linkings users and services in creative ways
3 - 5 pm -- Exhibits
7 - ? -- dinner

As usual, I'll try to post my thoughts on the sessions I attend, but also as usual, the timing will depend on the availability of internet access and electricity!

"Research Methods in Information", chapter 2

2007-06-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

Chapter 2 is all about reviewing the literature and contains a wealth of useful tips for strategically conducting a literature review no matter what level of review one needs to accomplish. The structure of this chapter (and perhaps the whole book, we'll see) is marvelously clear. She sets out the steps/skills/stages (information seeking and retrieval, evaluation, critical analysis, synthesis) and explains the process(es) for each one including some really practical ideas for organizing them.

One of the things I'm finding most exciting and at the same time frustrating about the book so far is the suggested further reading lists at the end of each chapter. Exciting because they contain more information about topics I'm interested in and frustrating because I'll never have time to read them all.

I've been thinking about this last a bit recently because I've been feeling as if I need to find a workable (for me) way of organizing what I read (as well as what I need/want to read) and have even begun working on creating an Access database as a way to accomplish it. One of the things I'd like to be able to do is trace the network of relationships between documents (this one cited that one, etc.), partly because I think it would be interesting to see and partly because I think it might help me to organize the ideas (which already are too many to keep in my head).

"Research Methods in Information" chapter 1

2007-06-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

This chapter introduces the reader to three major research paradigms: positivism, postpositivism, and interpretivism. It contains a brief history of each as well as an overview of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies that compares and contrasts the characteristics of each, particularly the criteria upon which judgments of quality are made.

Thoughts on this chapter:
It is thick with terminology with which inexperienced researchers and students may not be familiar but that is somewhat offset by their inclusion in the glossary.

I find myself thinking of it as a textbook for a research methods class. From that perspective, it seems useful.

I like the way she qualifies her brief overviews with repeated suggestions that the interested researcher read further on each topic...and provides recommendations on where to start such reading.

Here's my favorite quote from chapter 1: "Whichever paradigm you associate your research with, whichever methodological approach you take, demonstrating the value of your investigation is essential. This applies to practitioner research and student research: we all want our findings to be believed and are responsible for ensuring that they can be believed." (page 18)

However, I also like this one: (on establishing objectivity in quantitative research: "Findings are a result of the research investigation, not a result of the researcher's interpretation of those findings." (page 22)

"Research Methods in Information"

2007-06-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

My latest book to review for LJ is called "Research Methods in Information" by Dr. Alison Jane Pickard and I'm very excited about it. It's a handbook/textbook for those of us working in the information professions which, of course, is right up my alley. So I'm going to try something new here. I'm going to post my notes as I'm reading, more to keep myself organized than for any other reason but also on the off chance that there's anyone out there who shares my interest in research methods who might have a comment or insight that I don't have. Of course, I'll also post a link to the review when it's published.

So, in her introduction, Dr. Pickard lays out the importance of research in the fields of information studies, communications, records management, knowledge management and the related disciplines: (1) increasing the body of knowledge that makes up those professional fields, (2) the need for research skills in professionals in those fields, "Knowledge and experience of research is a fundamental part of what makes the 'information professional' ", (3) to allow practitioners to continue to grow in their professions as well as to better accomplish their tasks (e.g. benchmarking, assessment, strategic planning, and so on).

Next she describes the framework on which the organization of the book rests which she describes as the research hierarchy which moves from the research paradigm on which methodology is based and, in turn, on which the selection of a research method is based, and, in turn, on which selection of the research technique and instrument are based.

The research paradigm is the world view or underlying assumptions about the world that the researcher starts with. The methodology which is either qualitative or quantitative and is distinguished from the research method which is the strategy or approach to the problem taken by the researcher. The technique is an approach to data collection that is dictated by the research question. And the research instrument is the unique operationalization of the selected technique.

Now, rereading what I've written, I can already make two statements. First, I'm going to try NOT to simply summarize the book here. Rather I'm going to try to limit myself to comments about ideas that jump out at me as being noteworthy in some way. And second, I'm already engaged by and in total agreement with the idea that research is not just the realm of scholars who wish to contribute to a body of knowledge but rather research is accessible and achievable and useful, perhaps even necessary, for professionals in the information professions.

Too good not to share

2007-06-06T17:52:00.000-07:00

She gave a key note speach at NASIG last week and, after reading her blog for a couple of days, I am rapidly becoming a fan: http://freerangelibrarian.com/.

NASIG 2007: Betting a strong hand in the game of electronic resources management

2007-06-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

Paoshan Yue and Liz Burnette
Paoshan and Liz presented two versions of electronic resources workflow in their libraries. Paoshan described the evolution of e-resources workflow at the University of Nevada Reno Libraries and Liz presented a general model for building an e-resources workflow. This presentation was a little weak, lacking in content; the content was a bit too general. I would have liked more specifics about the actual workflows in their two libraries. However, it did get me to thinking that one of the ideas that I’ve been applying to web site design would apply equally in this situation. Many of us are trying to fit e-resources into our existing print serials workflows and that’s not something that we have (or maybe even should) be doing. The session got me to thinking about what other ways we might organize our e-resources work and other angles from which to approach that question.

See http://www2.library.unr.edu/serials/ERMworkflow.pdf for an example of
UNR's current workflow.

NASIG 2007: Alternatives to licensing of e-resources

2007-06-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

Selden Lamoureaux & Zach Rolnik

This session was everything I expected it to be. I KNEW someone was working on this, I just didn’t know who. Now I know. It’s a NISO working group called SERU (Shared E-Resources Understanding) and they seek to find ways for libraries and publishers to come to agreement about the purchase of e-resources without the need for a contract or license.

Their argument goes like this: contracts are a barrier to access. They force both libraries and publishers to expend staff time and effort to negotiate licenses for e-journals and e-resources subscriptions. End-users suffer from the delays in access to information as a result of the need to negotiate licenses and libraries, especially smaller libraries, are put at a financial disadvantage.

Efforts are being made to reduce these costs by creating a global license, including SERU. The SERU Working Group has found a fair amount of consensus on many of the issues to be included and have a number of good reasons to believe that it might be a viable alternative.

It’s not a standard license, click-through license, or a replacement for ALL licenses. Instead, it calls for libraries and publishers to agree to accept copyright as the governing law over the provision and use of information services and uses the purchase order to describe the terms of the sale.

ALPSP and SSP both support SERU as do ARL and SPARC.

For more info and to register as a user at www.NISO.org/committees/SERU (note that registration is not open yet but will be soon).

NASIG 2007: Electronic resources workflow management

2007-06-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

Paoshan Yue from the University of Nevada, Reno and Liz Burnette from North Carolina State University Libraries presented two models of managing electronic resources workflow and integrating it into existing libary workflow. Paoshan focused on technical integration of e-resources into serials workflow by presenting the evolution of UNR's procedures for making e-resources available from aquisitions to cataloging to accessibility. Their final (well, at least in use at present) workflow is presented at http://www2.library.unr.edu/serials/ERMworkflow.pdf.

Liz presented the staffing side of integrating e-resources into serials workflow. She emphasized the need to begin by examining existing procedures and the procedures required for e-resources processing before trying to integrate the two. She also explained an unexpected advantage of the process that they discovered at NCSU: the decrease in the occurence of inevitable slowed production when a staff member is away from the library or leaved altogether that resulted from cross-training several staff members to complete each task or step in the work flow.

This got me thinking about how we have really just squished e-resources and e-journals into our existing processed at TAMUCC and sparked a desire in me to go back and take a look at what we're doing and why. I was reminded of what I've learned about a point that was made about library web sites. That we tend to structure them in a manner similar to the organization of the physical library and that really doesn't need to be the case. Similarly, I think e-resources workflow does not necessarily need to be patterned on print serials workflow.

NASIG 2007: "What's the different about the social sciences?"

2007-06-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Leo Walford from Sage Publications presented this session in which he compared the characteristics of social science journals (and social science and scientists) and science, technology, and medical (STM) journals. Some of the points he made were:
- Social science journals are seen as smaller, less technologically demanding, and not published by large STM publishers. They are, therefore less expensive.
- How relevant is pricing in the world of big deals? While subscription prices increased between 1988 and 2005, the average price per page actually dropped by about 25% as a result of 'big deals'.
- Scocial scientists are less aware of the opportunities afforded by open access that are STM scholars but share a trend toward fewer visits to the physical library with them.
- (this is the point I found most interesting) Since the social sciences receive dramatically less grant funding compared to STM, when they apply the standard 1 to 2% of grant funds to paying for open access to their research publications they don't end up with enough to support the author pays model of open access that is becoming prevalent in STM publishing.
- In addition, social science journals have a longer shelf-life (meaning they are useful/cited for a longer period of time in general than STM journals), which leads publishers to impose longer embargos on their content, which makes the failure of the author pays model of open access that much more of a problem.

NASIG 2007 conference: opening session

2007-06-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

I'm attending the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) meeting this week in Louisville, KY. In addition to fulfilling a number of organizational duties (committee work, etc.), I'll be attending a number of workshops and presentation which I'll be reporting on here.

This morning the first session waa an all-conference session at which which Bob Stein spoke about "The Evolution of Reading and Writing in the Networked Era". He has some very interesting (and controversial I think, at least among librarians) ideas. His main point was that what have existed as marginal notes in paper books for hundreds of years are actually converstations between the author and the reader (as well as between readers) that are very much like comments on a blog or the open peer review that some pre-publications go through.

An odd conversion of events

2007-05-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

I finished reading a book this weekend about the Scopes Monkey Trial. It's one I'm reviewing for Library Journal so when the review is published I'll try to remember to add the link to it. In the meantime thought, what really stuns me about it is the way individuals, serving their own purposes for the most part, just happen to spur events that impact a whole nation and which impacts reverbrate for years.

The Scopes Monkey Trial happened because the town fathers in a small Tennessee town sought to boost the town's economy. At the time, it was against state law to teach Dawinian theory of evolution in public schools. By encouraging a young high school teacher named John Scopes to allow himself to be indicted for breaking this law by teaching evolution in the local highschool. The ACLU leapt to defend him and thus began one of the most widely followed trials of the early 20th century.

IUG 2007 – Annual Serials Renewals Made Easy

2007-05-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

Jane Theissen of Fontbonne University (yeah, THAT Fontbonne!) made this presentation.

Jane walked us through the steps she takes to involve faculty in the annual serials renewal process. They also have Ebsco Subscription Services as their subscription agent. She creates a review file of current subscriptions in Millennium and then adds usage data and current price to it in a spreadsheet. Then she estimates price increases using Ebsco’s Historical Price Analysis Report. The spreadsheet is sorted by fund code (academic department) and distributed to each academic department for changes, approval, etc.

Fontbonne has about 300 subscriptions and this is a fairly simplistic formula but I think that it could be a place to start a comprehensive review. Also, they do this during the spring semester (before receiving the official renewal list from Ebsco.

She noted that one disadvantage of her current process is that although the changes they recommend are made in May, they don’t take effect until the following January (when most journals begin new volumes and thus new subscriptions).

In response to a question from the audience, she told us that they don’t have any individual subscriptions for e-journals only, they receive all of their individual subscriptions in print (unless they are included in an electronic aggregation).

Another audience member mentioned that he had learned from Ebsco that sometimes they actually end a library’s subscription and begin a new one and that results in the library receiving duplicate issues.

IUG 2007 – Holdings Conversion using Global Update

2007-05-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Steve Shadle and Sion Romaine of the University of Washington Libraries made this presentation.

Their project involved taking their free text holdings statements and converting them to MARC21 For Holdings formats in the 853 and 863 fields in order to make them transmittable to OCLC. They anticipate that this will streamline ILL processing and improve user finding journals. In the first phase of the project they converted approximately 169,000 records. They added 007 and 008 fields, converted call number tags, and converted holdings statements tags.

They presented planning and preparation steps. Preparations included normalizing and correcting existing data by identifying errors and typos, deleting extra spaces, etc. and identifying how holdings are expressed currently and whether they need to be standardized. Using regular expressions in the matches function in Create Lists would be useful for accomplishing this.

There are number of things you can do and cannot do with Global Update, specifically, you cannot make changes using regular expressions.

Using the example of converting the call number fields, Steve provided tips for practice. The key is to find the pattern in the existing data and then using that pattern, create an algorithm that will achieve the desired change. In their local project, they converted call number fields (947 in the c group), holdings statements (947 in the h group),

Oooh, adding a 947 field to the OCLC record before downloading will create a check-in record upon download according to Steve, I’ll have to check that out!

Steve talked about how to use regular expressions in the matches function of Create Lists. In doing this he provided a screen shot from Millennium Create Lists search box in which the matches function is used with regular expressions. He also provided a screen shot from Global Update that displayed the five-step algorithm they used to convert a set of holdings statements.

I think this is they way we can, first, update our periodicals holdings to MFH and then consider creating holdings statements for monographs and other materials.

An audience member asked about the feasibility of exporting the data to other applications like OCLC. Steve replied that once the data is in MFH, it’s very easily exported. I got lost when he started talking about he gory details of exporting but he did mention an ‘export table’ and I wondered whether that has anything to do with the import tables that my colleague Abel has been learning about this week.

IUG 2007 – Building license records in ERM

2007-05-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

Diane Grover of the University of Washington made this presentation.

Until about five years ago, very few libraries did more than sign and file their license agreements with electronic resource vendors. At that point a number of libraries began to create systems, collections of license information and to develop standardized language to describe the elements of the license. Some of them were homegrown and some were developed by companies like III. Diane’s presentation described a retrospective project at the University of Washington Libraries to convert their paper license agreements to electronic and to include descriptive information from them in their III ERM.

They worked with a number of stakeholders in order to accomplish the project including stakeholders within the library like the ILL team, access services for reserves, the library web committee, and the library digitization committee. Stakeholders outside the library included the printing department (who prints course packs) and the attorney general.

They planned to include much of what had originally been preserved in paper files in addition to the licenses themselves, for example correspondence with vendors. Diane reviewed an active license record from their system and discussed some of the fixed and variable fields that they were using and why. They decided to store their digitized licenses on D-Space and then included links to them in their ERM license records. She also shared screen shots of their license records as they appear in the OPAC.

Other libraries are using other methods to accomplish similar ends. Some are hosting on their own web servers, others are simply using spreadsheets and database applications (like MS Access). Others are using Docutek ERes or the Millennium Media module. Some are also using OCR scanning to make the digitized licenses searchable. Most other libraries, like UW, are using some sort of security thus keeping them secure.

Some issues were common to most libraries: decisions about what data to record and what data to display for example. Most also struggle with the selection of language and terms that both users and library staff understand. They (librarians and staff working on the projects) also struggle with interpreting complex licensing language and terms. Diane shared a surprising outcome that she had not anticipated and that was that her librarians and staff became upset when they learned about some of the activities that licenses do not permit. And finally, all agreed that this kind of project is slow going.

Finally, she offered some advice about what to do and what to avoid as well as the outcomes within the library and the university that accrued from the project.

This was a really useful session that I REALLY hope that I remember to come back to when (if) we implement ERM. I do wonder though whether all this work is strictly necessary in light of the murmurs I’ve heard lately about the need for and possibly beginnings of development of a standard electronic resource license agreement.

Diane concluded the session with a discussion of some of the standards and de facto standards that are currently in development for ERM. She covered ERMI which is a de facto standard that is being widely used in the U.S. including in III’s ERM. She also mentioned the NISO License Expression Working Group (LEWG) which is working on an XLM based license terms transmission standard called ONIX-PL which is not completely compatible with the ERMI data elements. NISO is also working on a “non-license” approach called SERU (Shared E-Resource Understanding).

IUG – My Millennium: How long since you’ve taken a look at this powerful and personalized patron information page?

2007-05-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

Dinah Sanders, Product Manager and Dan Mattson, Library Training Consultants from III made this presentation.

My Millennium is a suite of tools that allows library users to obtain information without help from library staff. It contains basic patron information (name, address, etc.) as well as materials checked out, fines accruing, RSS feeds, etc. Dinah recommends turning it on and then making iterative changes and improvements since it is user ready “out of the box”.

There are a lot of options that can be varied by patron type. They allow you to do things like customizing functions specifically for library staff.

Some of the useful features include:
- The preferred searches feature allows the user to save frequently done searches to easily repeat them. It is also useful as an alert (via email) of new materials that result from a saved search.
- A function that allows them to update their own personal information. The library can customize the fields that patrons are allowed to update.
I wonder if this would be a useful way to maintain staff information like the telephone list.
- In conjunction with ResearchPro, III’s federated search engine, users can save searches or groups of resources that they frequently search.
This would be similar to the function in Search-All-Databases (Metalib) that allows users to create their own groups of resources.
- Patron ratings, III’s first product that allows users to provide their opinion about library materials. Since it only displays stars, there’s little potential for abuse and therefore it would require very little library staff intervention and moderation. You can turn it on by patron type and thereby target a specific audience (e.g. faculty).
- Users must opt in (and can opt out) of a reading history function that allows them to track materials that they’ve checked out. There is no staff access to reading history, the only way to access it is to log in as the user.
- Oh this is COOL: when logged in, users can limit searches to only the items in their reading history AND, with release 2007, they can export the contents of their reading history to their “shopping cart” (and, presumably, from there to an external application like MS Word or Excel).
- Also coming with release 2007 is a “my list” function that will allow patrons to create and maintain a list of materials, whether or not they’ve checked them out.
- Also coming with release 2007 is a “forgot your password?” function, the use of which is obvious.
- A feature that can be turned on is a special, library staff display of a bib record on the patron side that includes some of the fixed field data like date of last update, creation date, record number, bib level, material type codes, and so on.

One disadvantage for our library is that it collects more information about our users than we typically keep, for instance, their reading history. I wonder if the My Millennium info disappears when students, for example, are purged and reloaded at the end and beginning of each semester? Dinah answered yes, that it disappears when the patron record is purged…which brings up another question, and that is, a student’s reading history might not be sustained from semester to semester which could be a problem especially for doctoral students AND that ratings would not tend to develop over time (the natural emergence of a community opinion, that would normally develop according to systems theory, emergence would be blocked, stunted).